Cruciamentum Eternus
by Ankh-Ascendant
Summary: There is a ghost who haunts the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: a young man with a pale, pointed face and wide eyes. By day he walks the dungeons like a Slytherin; by night the silence is broken by his screams. This is his story.
1. It Ends Tonight

_TITLE: Cruciamentum Eternus  
CHAPTER: you must realize the truth: there are no chapters.  
AUTHOR: Ankh Ascendant ( setosgirl0 / neferseti0 )  
DATE: 2-24-10  
FANDOM: Harry Potter  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, or make any money from it.  
PAIRINGS: None  
TYPE: Drama  
RATING: PG-13  
WARNINGS: death, psychological trauma  
OCs: none  
BETA: none  
WORDS: 1860  
SUMMARY: There is a ghost who haunts the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: a young man with a pale, pointed face and wide eyes. By day he walks the dungeons like a Slytherin; by night the silence is broken by his screams. This is his story.  
NOTES: I'm not certain if I'll actually write the other parts to this story that I planned. If I do, however, please don't actually regard the chapters as "chapters", but as separate scenes of the same narrative. _

_Anyway, I thought about ghosts after rereading the fifth book, and I came to the conclusion that Draco, who is not known for his courage in the face of the unknown, and who has very strong ties to this world (or at least his mother; I love me an unabashed mama's boy) is an excellent candidate to shy away from the path after death and unconsciously choose the shadow of life. _

_And that is the basis of this story, if it really is a story. It's not very nice, but it made me quite happy to write. Then gain, that says something about me..._

* * *

_Cruciamentum Eternus_

"You failed."

The cold words chilled him more than the unnaturally chilly June night. The circle of Death Eaters had closed ranks around them in the darkness, forming a silent, stony witness to his judgment. All he could see were dark hoods watching impassively. He'd been told to remove his mask, marking him clearly as not one of them... He shivered and stared at the ground at their lord's feet, because it was easier than looking at him.

"I let everyone into the school," he said, forcing his voice steady. They had succeeded, surely he couldn't be blamed... He tried to hold firmly onto that fact; it wasn't working well. He remembered their lord's promised punishment should he fail in his task. "Dumbledore was killed."

Their lord was slow to answer. He was walking around the space slowly, circling him, and when he spoke his voice was cold and casual and dangerous. "But not... by... you."

He flinched, but raised his chin with what he hoped looked like confidence; it felt like foolish posturing. "Only because Snape interfered before I could." He sought the snake-like face, very briefly, then dropped his eyes again; he couldn't look at him for long. Especially when he was lying.

If their lord's face could show emotions like a normal person's, he looked vaguely amused. The expression was chilling. "You had your chance."

One large, pale hand twitched toward his wand; that was all it took for him to hit his knees, no longer even pretending to be confident. Pride wasn't worth the Dark Lord's wrath. "Give me another, please..." he pleaded, panic running through him and coloring his voice.

Pitiless red eyes looked down at him; he tried not to tremble, but there was nothing in those eyes he could appeal to or manipulate to get out of this.

Finally, the Dark Lord turned around, cloak flaring. "Lucius," he called.

His eyes darted to the hooded Death Eater who stepped forward from the circle. "My lord."

"Punish him."

"Yes, lord." The Death Eater drew his wand.

He drew back a little, disbelieving. "Father..."

With only the barest hesitation, the wand leveled at him. "_Crucio_," his father said quietly, coldly.

He screamed. The ground came up to meet him, but he didn't feel it; all he could feel was the fire where his bones should be, surging through him, consuming him...

Then it disappeared, as instantly as it had come, but the memory of the pain was enough to keep him curled up on the ground, whimpering.

"Again."

"No..." he whimpered, looking up at his father desperately, pulling himself back along the ground. The eye slits in the blank mask gave nothing away.

"_Crucio_."

The world turned to pain again. There was nothing else...

He couldn't move when it stopped this time, just choked and gasped in a ball on the ground.

"Again."

"No..." he breathed, curling up.

His father's voice was quieter this time, but no less cold. "_Crucio_."

Pain...

Waves of pain...

He wanted it to end...

Merciful darkness rolled over him, extinguishing the pain and everything else.

---

"_Ennervate_."

He whimpered as awareness came back, and curled into a ball. His body ached and he didn't want to remember why. He could hear jeering around him, though, from all sides, those hateful voices...

"Three curses and he faints like a little girl..."

"And he screams for his _mother_..."

His hands curled into fists in the grass, hot shame burning beside the memory of pain in every muscle. He tried to sit up without making a sound; he wasn't entirely successful, but he did manage to sit, looking warily up. His eyes avoided the jeering circle of Death Eaters, but found their lord, standing back, wand in hand. It had been his cold voice that had pulled him from the darkness.

The only Death Eater he could see not mocking him stood in front of him, impassive behind the mask, watching him. His eyes flinched away from his father.

"Again."

He flinched backward.

His father's voice came from behind the mask. "My Lord, if I may... We got into the school, and Dumbledore is dead, because of him, despite his inability..."

"I said _again_, Lucius."

There was a slight quiver to the wand that pointed at him. He pulled away, staring. "No, father, please..."

His father didn't seem to see his pleas. He might as well have begged the stars for help for all the sympathy he could see in the masked face. "..._Crucio_."

Again waves of pain rolled over him, obscuring everything but, like a tide drawn over him by a merciless moon. He was drowning in it... so much pain he couldn't breathe...

It may not have lasted long; he couldn't tell, time under it was immaterial. He only knew that when it ended he clutched at the ground, sobbing halfhearted pleas for mercy or protection. All he could think of was that he wanted his mother, he didn't want to be here... he needed her to help him... he couldn't do this, he needed her...

He gasped for air as the pleading trailed off, opening his eyes to stare up at the stars above the heads of the Death Eaters in his line of vision, curling up to try to stop his muscles twitching in uncontrollable spasms as they relived the pain. He struggled to get any sort of control over his body back, and generally failed. He really didn't think he could take more of this.

"Father..." His eyes turned desperately toward his father, trying to make him see that he really couldn't...

"You're losing heart, Lucius. Again."

He flinched and buried his face at the sound of the cold voice, choking on a sob, but there was no immediate return of the agony this time. His father was resisting the order.

"My lord... surely he has been punished..."

He listened to the voices, only half aware of them, very tentatively glad not to be in pain but too afraid of inciting the curse again to even lift his face and look at them. Maybe if he just did what they wanted, stayed here without trying to resist, he wouldn't have to go through that again... maybe he had suffered enough to satisfy their lord's wrath...

"It sounds as though you're trying to argue with me."

"Never, my lord," he answered swiftly. "I only fail to see how he will be any more use to you if this continues much longer."

"Don't flatter yourself." The Dark Lord's voice was cruelly amused; he grabbed the grass and tried not to hear it. "You've been gentle with him. Such weak curses wouldn't even break a Muggle." There were a few cruel titters around the circle. "And yet you fool yourself... Do you really think I shall have any more use for him, now that he's proven himself even more of a failure than you?"

The words meant little to him, though he knew they should. It was so much trouble to think, he didn't want to think, he just wanted to hide, or disappear. They meant something to his father, though; his voice took on an odd strangled quality. "My lord... my son..."

"You mean to say you can't follow this order?"

There was no answer.

The silence was broken by a derisive laugh. "Lord, give him to me! Lucius and my sister may be weak, but not I! If I had sons, I would give them all to you, and gladly!"

"You should take a lesson, Lucius." The voice sounded mocking. "Bellatrix, Rodolphus, take over this punishment... keep him under."

"No..." He looked up as he realized two dark forms were coming toward him, and looked desperately toward his father, standing back, looking almost frozen. "No, father, please, help me... please..."

His father said nothing, did nothing, to help him. The next thing he heard, still pleading with his father, was his aunt's cruel voice.

"_Crucio_."

His father had been easy on him. Where before waves of pain had covered everything else, now there simply was nothing else. His entire world turned into an eternity of agony that consumed him from the inside out. There was no ebb or flow of the pain, it only built higher and higher, taking more and more of him... He would have died to escape it.

When the blackness took him this time, he hoped that he had.

---

"_Ennervate_."

He opened his eyes to the starry sky and choked – not on the tears that were sliding wetly down his face this time, but on the thick taste in his throat. He rolled with a whimper onto his side and spat blood onto the grass beside him; his throat protested, and the taste returned quickly enough. Something was torn with his screaming... He didn't even have the energy to worry about it.

A sharp boot dug int his arm and kicked him over; he cried out, clutching at his arm, surprised at the pain that hadn't disappeared with the curse. He realized distantly as he felt the sickly bulge and sharp pain as he grabbed it that it was broken, but he didn't know how.

"This isn't even going to be fun," Bellatrix complained, standing over him. "If you can't go more than five minutes without passing out..."

"Stop..." he whispered, curled into a ball, not even looking up at her. He didn't expect her to listen, but he was beyond being able to control himself. "Please..."

She laughed and flicked her wand at him again.

He was consumed with the pain before he even heard her curse him. Again, there was absolutely nothing but pain, anywhere. The burning agony ravaged through him, consuming everything and leaving nothing in its wake but even more pain, leaving him nothing but a screaming mass of pain consuming itself...

Darkness returned, but there was no respite; someone brought him back straight into the agony, like it had never lifted and never would. It only continued to rage and burn, building inexorably upon itself until he couldn't even hope for its ending and was finally pushed into darkness again.

Again and again forever this cycle continued, darkness but no relief breaking the torture into thick chunks. How many he didn't know. Time had no meaning, or didn't exist; only pain was real. He couldn't even have said who he was.

All he had left was the agony and the desperate, mindless terror screaming for his mother to make it better, to save him.

Confused visions mixed intermittently with the pain. Merciless red eyes. A cruel laughing woman. His father unmasked, restrained physically by the two burly Crabbes. He looked like he was yelling. Screaming.

Screaming...

"Draco!"

A high cold laugh overrode the screaming, the yelling, the terror. A brilliant green light swallowed his screams and finally ended his pain.


	2. Awakening

The cloaks of the Death Eaters circled loosely together in the darkness blended closely with the night, almost disappearing in it; everything was so washed out, dim, like he was looking at the world through a dirty window.

There was a voice in the middle of the circle, hidden from his view.. A high, cold, frightening voice that made him want to flee...

"Put my mark over him, Lucius... then you may leave."

The dim forms in the darkness started Disapparating with loud cracks, revealing the hidden scene. Through the holes in their circle he could finally see his father, on the ground; the speaker had probably been the first one gone. There was something else on the ground beside him... a dead body...

Cold fear twisted his insides as he drifted to get a look at it, not really wanting to see, unable to stay away.

What he saw was his own face frozen in agony, and he lost the world again in screams no one else could hear.


	3. Reunited and Divided

"Lucius... You're back, as he promised... I thought, perhaps..."

"Yes, he kept his promises. All of them."

"...Draco... Where is he?"

"Listen to me. Aurors will be here shortly-"

"Was he captured? He came to see you get out and you let him be captured?"

"Narcissa, he didn't come to greet me. He came to be judged."

"...No. No, my son! Where is he? If you let them hurt him...!"

"Not only hurt. I let him kill him. Draco is dead."

"No! You...!"

"I think that the Aurors will bring his body."

"You left him there? You let him die and then you left him all alone... You should have stopped them! He's your son, you should have died to protect him if that was what it took!"

"I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry."

"...Draco..."

"They'll pay. I swear, they'll pay for this..."

* * *

White marble stood out starkly against the pearly sky. Miserable, watery light filtered through the clouds, giving the lonely building a gentle glow. It was an attractive building, but with an unmistakeable air of solemnity and tragedy about it. Alone in the silent grey day, the building itself might have been a ghost.

It was a tomb.

Two figures appeared in the doorway, silent but for her quiet weeping. He had his arm around her, helping her down the few steps to the grass; they were obviously isolated together under the same cloak of grief. He was tall, with sleek blond hair and grey eyes. His face bore new lines, carved from pain, but held its stony mask as he supported her. She was shorter than her husband, but also tall, and as tragically beautiful as the tomb; the wetness of tears on her normally composed face and the flowing blonde hair that fell limp down her back conspired to make her look as though she had drowned in her grief.

"Mother...!"

They both looked up, but the scene was already fading again...

* * *

Silence.

The rhythmic ticking of a clock echoed through the manor. A few portraits muttered in their frames. Floorboards creaked under the weight of a House Elf. Those sounds only seemed to accent the silence, though, without breaking it.

The master bedroom was both the only room with a living occupant, and the most still of all. Though sunlight fought its way through the drawn curtains, she lay in the bed as still as if she were a corpse herself. A tray of breakfast sat untouched by the bed, but her eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the corner. Against the rich black-green of the bedclothes, she looked very pale; grief seemed to have sapped her of her color as well as her strength.

"Mother..."

She proved she was alive: her hand twitched tighter around something in a frame on the bed, pulling it to her chest. Her eyes didn't move, though, and he found himself drifting closer.

"Mother, I need you..."

Her eyes came into focus quickly, and she turned, as though half considering sitting up. "Draco..."

"I need you..." he repeated quietly.

Her eyes went wide. "Oh no..." she breathed as she sat up, the thing she was holding sliding from her grasp and clattering to the floor. He saw that it was a picture of him before he had started school, a young Draco who was now grinning at the ceiling, unaware of his fate... "No, Draco, you should have gone on..."

Her hand trembled minutely as she reached out toward him. She must have touched his cheek; he felt a faint warm sensation, and saw her shiver involuntarily.

"I needed you," he repeated again, sinking through the bed as he tried to sit beside her. His translucent silver hands caught his attention. For a long moment he couldn't look away. Those were really his? "I died," he murmured, half to himself. He was really dead?

He realized he was leaning into her for comfort only when he saw her flinch in the corner of his eye, like she'd been doused in cold water. Of course, that was what happened when a ghost went through you. And he was a ghost.

He was suddenly up again, floating around the room, pacing without actually walking. The ghost of his broken arm flopped loosely, but there was no pain, just like there was no solidity to the furniture, no substance to his mother's touch. He couldn't really _feel_ anything.

"Draco, why did you stay?" he heard her ask. She was out of bed finally, approaching him, but not touching. Who would want to touch him now? Not that anyone could even if they did.

"I needed you." He floated around her then grabbed his hair, staring ahead at nothing. "_Crucio_, _Crucio_, _Crucio_..." he muttered; he must have, since it was his voice. The words bubbled up from somewhere in his mind and simply fell out.

Her blue eyes widened as she realized. "They tortured you..."

"Why weren't you there?" he asked desperately, facing her. The question, the need, burned to be answered; he realized dimly that he was accusing her, and he would hurt her, but that didn't matter as much. He just needed... "It hurt _so much_, why didn't you stop him?"

He saw the barbs strike home; he saw guilt and pain on her face. It didn't ease his burning mind at all.

"Draco, you must know I would have." She reached out, despite what he was, and touched his cheek again. The faint warmth of the contact helped more than an hour of her words could have, settling his mind and pulling him back toward rationality. He didn't need her explanations, he needed her touch... "If I had been there, I would have died before the Dark Lord laid the first spell on you."

"Not him," he murmured, sinking toward her. She didn't flinch this time, and he sighed, feeling something like peace for the moment. "They weren't his spells."

"Then who?" Her voice developed the hard protective edge that was so comforting.

"...father..." he sighed, drifting away.

* * *

"Lucius. Come home. Now."

A brilliant green light...

The light splattered against the wall like it was half liquid, evaporating away. His father's reflexes had barely saved him; his hair had been blown by the curse as it passed his Apparition point within inches of him. Now he stood with his wand out, leveled at the threat, a frown on his face.

"What are you doing, Narcissa?"

They stood facing each other with their wands steady, she with a fierce, angry light to her eyes, he defensive but waiting. The advantage was hers. When she was like this she would take on anyone, Voldemort himself even; he wasn't yet willing to hurt her unless he had to.

"You tortured my son," she accused; her voice wavered the way her hand did not, showing the strain the fact put on her mind.

"Draco was _our_ son," he corrected firmly. "Put your wand away and I'll forget that you tried to kill me."

"I'm just sorry I missed," she hissed, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Put it _away_." He edged closer, eying her wand, his own holding steady on her.

She ignored him. "You didn't tell me he was tortured."

"I didn't think you needed to know that."

"He was my son! I want to know!"

She twitched her wand to curse him; he reached for it at the same time, and there was a brief struggle. A curse from her wand ricocheted off the wall and lit the rug on fire, but he managed to pin her firmly against him with her wand hand held tight. The position forced them to look into each other in the face; neither of them showed any sign of giving in.

"How do you know this?" he demanded, pulling her back as she started to free herself. He put out the fire with an absent motion of his wand.

She threw a cold look into his face. "Draco told me."

He only looked at her, a frown furrowing his brows.

"I'm here." Even as he said that, he discovered it wasn't really true. His voice didn't get their attention, and moving forward involved no movement whatsoever... when he lost the world, he lost his form with it, and now he found himself nothing more than a roaming awareness. But now he needed them to see him...

Perhaps the will was all it took; silvery hair flopped into his eyes and he glided forward, repeating himself. "I'm here."

His sudden appearance got their attention this time; his father's eyes locked on him and widened, and his grip on his wife loosened. "No..."

His voice turned into a choked noise and he staggered backward, wand falling from his limp hand to hit the floor just before he did. Her face was cold as she held her wand on him and watched him convulse for half a minute; he could not help but notice with a vague touch of shame that none of the choked noises of pain he made turned into real screams...

She let him off after thirty second and crouched beside him while he panted and groped for his wand.

"How does it feel?" she demanded, pulling his wand out of his reach. "To have someone you trust do that to you?"

"I was trying to save him." He coughed and started to sit, but she pushed his shoulder back down to the floor.

"He told me what you did to him... how you tortured him, and he wanted me to be there to save him from _you_..." She gripped her wand so tightly it looked like she was about to stab him with it. The look on her face was equal parts fury and disgust; it was probably the most genuine emotion that had shown on her face in a long time. "I wish I had been. You'd be dead."

A wince passed over his face, and he sought out his son's ghostly eyes. "I was trying to save you," he repeated, and pushed her away, without much strength, only what it took to make her sit as he sat up beside her. "Listen to me." There was a very weak note of pleading in his voice. With some satisfaction, he noted that his father's hands were trembling a little after his round under the curse.

He turned and drifted away, but couldn't keep from drifting back, circling them loosely. "I'm listening," he said after a very long moment of silence. "I know. You didn't dare disobey his orders... even for me..." More accusations came out of his mouth without his permission. He couldn't stop his voice from showing his hurt, betrayal. And why should he, really? He was dead, they should know how he felt about that.

"I thought he might spare your life if he thought we had been punished enough. Don't think that was easy for me to do."

He didn't even look down at his parents, drifting away again. "I begged you not to..."

Behind him, he heard the sharp sound of flesh on flesh. He knew without looking that she had slapped him.

"Don't tell me how hard it was for _you_," she hissed. "Think about how hard it was for _Draco_, when you tortured him to death."

"I tried to save him," he repeated firmly. He turned to see his father holding her wrist firmly to keep her from striking him again, staring into her face as though his eyes could make her believe him. "I tried convincing the Dark Lord to stop his punishment. When I realized he was going to kill him anyway..."

"That's true." They both looked up at him, but he turned and drifted away again, running his hand through his hair, staring off into space. "Aunt Bella laughed..."

"Bella...?"

"Your sister took over the torture." He heard his father's voice rise as he stood up. "She and her husband took turns casting and reviving him when he passed out, just like they used to do. They kept him under the curse for more than an hour straight."

"She wouldn't..."

"You're surprised at her, but believe it of me? She's a lunatic. So are you if you doubt it."

His mother didn't answer. He shivered, though he could no more feel cold than anything else, and grabbed his hair again. He could hear her laughing...

"Where were you?" she demanded.

"They made me watch," he answered grimly. "And made it clear that his death was my punishment. Believe me, I tried to save him... I just couldn't."

Was that true? He thought it was. The confused visions from the the end occurred to him... he remembered seeing his father held back, and yelling. He wished he knew if he had defied his lord... Had he threatened the others or their leader for him? He wanted to think so.

"Draco, come here."

The voice came from a distance; he slowly turned around, noticing that he was losing definition. He could just float away and lose the world again... maybe he would go wherever he was supposed to have gone after he died.

Even as he thought that, though, his form and mind became clearer, and he drifted back toward his parents, where they stood in his father's study. She seemed to have forgiven him; he had his wand back and she wasn't trying to kill him, at least.

She reached out and touched his cheek again as he joined them, and he relaxed. The sound of phantom laughter in his ears disappeared with the gentle warmth. He almost felt normal...

His father made a motion with his wand that drew his attention. A long strip of parchment stretched itself across the desk, and he touched it with the tip of his wand; thin blue lines crawled across it from that point, forming a shape, broken by points... it wasn't hard to recognize. It was the constellation Draco for which he was named. Each point was a star... and each star was labeled with a name. "C_rabbe... Crabbe... Lestrange, Ro... Lestrange, Ra... Lestrange, Bellatrix... Goyle... Goyle... Nott... Dolohov... McNair... Snape... Avery... Mulciber... Voldemort_." Fourteen stars for fourteen Death Eaters who had been there that night.

"I've just come from Avery's," he said; that star turned red, and an elegant line crossed out the name. He looked up and their eyes met. "This is not enough, but it's all that I can do. You will be avenged."

He looked down at the paper again, with a distant feeling of satisfaction. If they were all dead, if they had suffered like him, perhaps he would feel better. Yes, he thought maybe he would...

His eyes lingered on the last name, at the dragon's tail. '_Voldemort_'. Could his father beat him? More importantly, would he fight him for his sake?

Maybe he would. Even if he couldn't win.

"You're going to kill my sister?"

"Not quickly," he promised flatly.

He thought he would like to see that.

No one spoke again. Faint warmth ran down his back, and he closed his eyes with a sigh, letting his mother's touch comfort him as it had always done.

* * *

Night stole over the day, and in the darkness he wandered the halls of the manor house alone, while his parents like all the rest of the living world slept. As the night wore on, the darkness grew thicker, and it brought with it red eyes and laughter and the echo of agony...

And finally, in the darkest hours before dawn, he began to scream.


	4. Red

"Hello, Vince. Do you remember me?"

It took a moment for his former classmate Crabbe to tear his eyes away from his porn magazine and look up. First he looked toward the door, because it didn't occur to his tiny mind that the voice could come from anywhere else, but when he found it empty the familiar expression of constipated confusion rose up on his face, and he sat up on the messy bed, looking around.

When he finally caught sight of his visitor floating by the wall, his eyes bugged out and the magazine slid from his loose hand. He made a noise like "guh", his mouth hanging open.

"You remember me, don't you?" Draco pressed with false casualness, floating around the room, watching Crabbe's eyes bug further. "Your friend for ten years? The only reason you passed a single class? The one who kept you out of trouble more often than not? Remember that, Vincent?" Crabbe only stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, speechless. "Or maybe this is more familiar." He suddenly let out a piercing scream.

Crabbe fell off the bed and hit the floor with a solid thud.

He floated and leaned over him, pretending not to notice that he'd fallen. "Remember that?"

"Draco..." He scrambled clumsily to his feet, giving an involuntary jerk when he accidentally pushed himself through the icy ghost. Draco floated back to give him a little room. "How're you here?"

"I died, remember?" he reminded him, speaking like he was talking to a particularly slow five-year-old. "That's okay, maybe you didn't see that part... Maybe you were too busy _holding down my father_ so he'd have to watch to see..."

Crabbe seemed to realize for the first time that this wasn't good for him. His eyes widened again with dim comprehension. "Are you mad?" he asked.

He floated around him, making Crabbe turn to keep looking at him. "Why would I be mad?" he said sharply, his façade of calmness deteriorating. "You only made sure I died a horrible, agonizing death..."

"I didn't..." his former comrade, or lackey, mumbled in his soft voice.

"You did. You think if you hadn't been keeping my father back I'd be dead? Don't you think he would have saved me?"

Crabbe turned to keep him in view again and tripped over his feet, sprawling on the floor in an ungainly heap.

He leaned close; Crabbe ducked his head down to the floor like he was expecting to be hit. As though a ghost could actually hit him. "It's your fault I'm dead," he said flatly, and then kicked his foot through Crabbe' solid head, watching him flinch from the icy sensation.

"I only did what he told me to do," Crabbe mumbled into the floor. He was far too large to cower effectively, but it certainly looked like he was trying.

"It doesn't matter who told you, you still did it."

"What was I supposed to do?" He looked up, muddy brown eyes searching dully for an answer.

"Not," he answered simply, floating around him again, eyes glued to him. That burning in his mind was slowly building again, with every moment he had to look at his former comrade.

"But..." Crabbe trailed off, obviously trying to compute that idea.

"Don't strain yourself." He sneered and floated through him, watching him flinch again with a feeling of satisfaction. Was Vincent Crabbe afraid of ghosts? Had he always been? Of course, it made sense, he was a simple boy and ghosts were something complicated, something he couldn't just punch away... Perfect. So perfect. How had he never noticed this before?

"What kind of person just stands there and lets their friend be tortured?" he wondered, eyes fixed on Crabbe as he drifted smoothly around him. He let himself drift closer just to watch him flinch, then gave him a little breathing room again.

"Didn't have a choice," he grunted, his piggy little eyes firmly on the floor, as though by not looking at him he might disappear. "He said to..."

"But you did it. I don't think I'll ever let you forget," he added, drifting around him again. He saw the thick hands curl into fists on the floor, and smirked a little bit. "Why not? I have all eternity, the rest of your life won't be that long... I can just follow you around forever..."

"No." Crabbe shook his head and backed away, sitting up to get away from him. He didn't let him, drifting closer, appreciating the trapped look on his dull face.

"Why?" he drawled, keeping his voice deceptively casual. "It's not like you can stop me..."

With a sound of frustration, Crabbe finally snapped and lashed out, lunging forward casually. The huge fist just slid right through him, followed by Crabbe toppling forward.

He laughed. It sounded brittle even to his own ears.

"Shut up!" Crabbe scrambled back to his feet, his face painted with resentment and frustration. "Go away, Draco, I didn't kill you!"

"Yeah..." Draco floated around him lazily, hearing his own voice from a distance, quiet and reasonable. He let it say what it wanted to, only watching his friend's face for a reaction."You did."

With a strangled cry of frustration, Crabbe charged at him, evidently resorting to the only method he knew of making someone shut up. He only plunged through him; Draco turned on the spot and watched impassively as he slammed into the door, which flew open beneath his weight, and staggered out of the room.

His feet were pulled out from under him without warning; his head knocked into the ground as he was hoisted up by his ankle, and slammed unceremoniously into the wall, knocking a few pictures to the floor with the sound of shattering glass as he was dragged the length of the hall. He squirmed and tried to pull himself down, grunting with the effort, but he was pulled effortlessly around the corner.

Draco drifted after him, the length of the hall passing without his notice. His eyes rose to the ceiling before he rounded the corner, and he saw them before anything else, both Crabbes suspended in the air, thrashing futilely toward the ground, getting entangled in their falling robes.

"I thought I was going to have to go get him."

He didn't let his eyes waver from the pair over their heads, letting his father's voice slide off his mind. They were held too far apart to reach each other... he wondered if they would try. The elder Crabbe had realized his son was there with him finally and was bellowing empty threats; he wondered where he had grown the backbone to challenge the leader he'd followed so faithfully.

The thrashing and yelling turned into great jerking spams and grunts and low cries of pain, and now it was Vincent who was yelling angrily. The sound didn't mean much to him; he didn't bother to hear the words. The elder Crabbe suffered the curse as pathetically as any other victim, and he watched dispassionately.

Only a murmured "_Crucio_," at his side announced the change of victim; Crabbe went limp, panting, and his son started jerking under the curse instead. That was a nice touch, to not do them both at the same time, so they'd both have to watch the other...

Vincent actually managed to scream words while he was being cursed; that was better than he would have expected of him. He wouldn't have expected him to plead, either, though.

"Draco."

From the sound of the word, it wasn't the first time his name had been called. Wordlessly he let his eyes slide off the twitching Crabbes and looked at his father, to find him looking at him already. His light grey eyes were piercing.

"You're about to start screaming."

"No I'm not." His eyes rose again. He had no real way of knowing if that were true or not; he hadn't yet recognized whatever warning signs preceded the tortured fits, except that it was usually at night... His parents fancied they could tell, of course, but he chose not to believe his father now.

"You are." It sounded like he had looked up at the other two as well. "Go home."

"I want to see this one."

His father cursed the elder Crabbe again, and for a moment there was no sound but his choking cries.

"If you're found here, it's the end," his father finally said. "The Dark Lord will know who has been killing his lieutenants."

And his father would be killed, no doubt, probably very painfully. He wondered distantly if, were his father to die, he would become a ghost as well. He wondered how long his mother would live without either of them.

"Go home."

The curse switched target again. Vincent started screaming. Dimly he heard his own name.

"No, please! Draco... help...!"

He looked up at him distantly, watching for a long moment, the screams sliding away from his thoughts into unimportance. Only when he felt his father turn beside him to look at him did he disappear.

-

He didn't immediately see anyone in the manor. That didn't surprise him; he wasn't looking. Whispers of thoughts drifted slowly in the back of his mind, beneath a slowly building pressure that he could neither name nor contain.

Then he was in the drawing room without seeing any halls pass him, and there was the constellation on the wall in a place of honor, an even number of stars red and white now. Only Crabbe, Crabbe, Snape, Lestrange, Lestrange, Lestrange, and Voldemort remained white.

That meant nothing to him.

He turned away, feeling turmoil build beneath his thoughts somewhere, squeezing them out of existence between emotion and burning pressure. It didn't matter. It was all so far away...

His eyes skated over the long mirror taking up most of the next wall as he turned; they arrested abruptly when they met themselves there, leaving him staring helplessly. Who was he looking at? That wasn't him... He didn't have those wide, scared eyes... or that pathetically disheveled hair... or that thin, sick-looking face... so pale he was almost completely transparent... Where was Draco? Who was he?

There was faint warmth as his mother touched him, but he didn't see her in the mirror. He couldn't really see the mirror at all any more, only the pearly form it reflected, etched into his vision like an accusation. Even her touch was losing whatever reality it had, and if she was speaking he could hear none of it. It was all overwhelmed with grey and numb now, again...

In the corner of his eye, Vincent Crabbe's star turned red.


	5. Maybe

"The Dark Lord is dead."

It was the sound of his father's voice that roused Draco from the listless contemplation of a fountain outside the window. He turned, already smiling, toward the doorway where he heard it from, prepared to welcome him home finally.

His mother was there already. He turned just in time to see her kiss him – a slightly disconcerting scene; how strange to see them being openly affectionate – and he almost looked away immediately. He didn't, quite, but he stopped in place.

"We heard that two days ago." He had his arm around her, and she was speaking from that comfortable space, one hand wrapped in the front of his dirty robe as though to keep him from disappearing again. Draco wondered if she knew it was there. "Where have you been? I was sure you were dead." Her voice was level and reasonable, if a touch accusatory, but he thought he saw her hand clench tighter.

It was not as though his father showed any desire to go anywhere, though. His arm was settled comfortably around her waist and looked relieved to be there. "The new ministry had some questions," he said, nudging her into the room and sinking with a low sigh into a chair by the fire. The brighter light threw his face into sudden relief; he looked tired, the worse for wear after the weeks he'd spent away, but satisfied.

For the first time, Draco understood the words he'd said, not only his voice. The Dark Lord was dead. That meant...

With a slow wave of his wand, his father turned the three remaining stars in his revenge constellation red. Draco immediately took his eyes from his parents and went to it, looking them over. Bellatrix, Snape, and Voldemort, all red... All of them were dead, finally, after a year...

"What happened?" he heard his mother ask behind him. He continued to admire the pattern of bloody stars.

"He wanted a wand..." He glanced back to see his father thoughtfully looking at his own wand. "Dumbledore's wand, for some reason. He killed Snape because he thought it would let him master it." There was an almost audible 'or something' on the end of that. The inner workings of the Dark Lord's mind were not easily fathomed.

Draco looked again at the constellation, searching for Snape's name. So his father hadn't been able to kill him after all... even though he deserved it, and his father deserved to be the one to do it. Snape was the one who was supposed to help and protect him, and instead he delivered him right to his killer. He'd been looking forward to that death...

His father was going on without his attention. "He tried to kill Potter again, and it rebounded on him, again. It killed him this time."

"Why?" She didn't seem to accept that explanation so easily. Maybe rightly. It did sound far-fetched, too simple to be true... But they had always known there was something abnormal between the Dark Lord and Harry Potter.

"Potter had a theory about the wand. He believed that because he disarmed Dumbledore, Draco was the master of Dumbledore's former wand..."

Draco turned around again, brow furrowed a little, but his father was looking thoughtfully through him, still holding his wand as though he were contemplating it. "Somehow he knew that Bellatrix killed you."

He saw his mother grip his arm firmly, but if she was actually surprised she hid it behind her cool mask. He wasn't as cool himself, and found himself drifting closer. "Wasn't it-"

his father interrupted before he could finish the question. "It was Bellatrix. I suppose having family deliver the blow was supposed to be more painful." Their eyes met calmly, but he knew his father didn't like talking about this, and he didn't force him to meet his eyes long. He noticed that there was a bruise on the shadowed side of his father's pale face. "And somehow Potter knew that. The wand was supposed to have passed from you to her."

"Who killed her?" His mother's voice was quiet and calm.

"I couldn't have said; the Weasely woman and I hit her at the same time. Potter had then disarmed me, however; his logic followed that if it had been me, the Dark Lord's wand wouldn't harm him, as he was now its master. Apparently, he was correct."

No one answered. He turned away from his father's eyes to the constellation on the wall again, eyes tracing the names over and over without really reading them. All red now... He reached out and brushed his intangible fingers across the red dots. All were dead, and most had suffered as he had before they finally got there.

With the deaths of Voldemort, Bellatrix, and Snape, the three most accountable for his death and pain, he did feel some satisfaction. He was slowly beginning to realize it wouldn't make very much difference, however. Knowing they were gone would not stop him sinking into terrible waking nightmares of pain almost every night, and screaming until he faded away... It had obviously not been the trigger he needed to move on, if it was even really possible for a ghost to do so like the rumors said. Even the truth about who had really killed him was nothing but a briefly interesting fact, with little emotion and less closure attached to it.

So the question was, did it ultimately matter at all?

He let out a long, low sigh and turned around again, less to look at his parents than to simply not look at the meaningless dots. He ended up looking at his parents anyway, though, and found his father still staring at him. Or through him, at the names? No, he was looking at him intently, piercingly enough to make him uncomfortable. There were shadows in his eyes that had nothing to do with the flickering firelight.

His mother could hardly not have noticed, but she pretended not to... or maybe she really was so deeply worried about his father that she really didn't. Her eyes were for the moment only for him. "Why did the ministry let you go?" she asked, suspicious either of their motives or what he had done for his freedom.

"Potter vouched for me." He squeezed her arm, but his eyes didn't move, or even blink. He might have been talking to either of them. "He, and various Order members, I'm sure, saw me killing Death Eaters in the battle."

Not long ago he might have taken that as a calculated ploy to appear to be on the winning side... maybe he still would have, if not for the way he was looking at him. Now, he had a feeling his father had started killing when he realized it would be his last chance to have revenge.

Floating back, he turned and looking at the constellation again, then at his father, gauging where his eyes were. He found that they lingered on the red stars a moment before they jumped to him again.

So now he knew. "I'm glad," he said quietly, and summoned a small smile for him. A line of tension in his father's shoulders seemed to relax, though nothing changed in his face; he glanced at the constellation again, then he closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, resting.

Maybe it didn't matter if it actually mattered to him... Maybe it had never been for him at all. Maybe he was all right with that.


	6. Spectrum

"You're a piece of work for sure."

"No, that would be you." Draco gave an annoyed look at the portrait as he floated past it, and on toward the rest of his rest of his painted ancestors who lined the hall on both sides. Dozens of pale faces watched him pass, many with that instinctive sort of sneer most of his family adopted as their default expression. It was oddly comforting, in a judgmental sort of way.

"And a fine one, too!" the taunting portrait called after his back.

Rolling his eyes and trying to ignore it worked, as long as it could: only until he reached the end of the hall, unfortunately. He supposed he could have passed through the door and gone outside, but that wasn't his way. He rarely haunted the grounds, especially during the day; the house was more comfortable to him. That left him little choice but to pass the inspection of the historic Malfoys again.

At the gilded door he turned and traced his way languidly back up the hall, pretending not to notice the scores of blue and grey and occasionally green eyes that watched him go. It must be boring, he mused, being a portrait... no one to talk to but the other portraits, nothing to see but the same stretch of wall and floor for a hundred years, unless someone decided to move your frame over...

"Fancy meeting you here," the portrait on the end drawled again as he approached. He glared into it; if not for the fact that it was in color and he wasn't, it could have been a mirror. The teen subject leaned smugly on the frame, probably delighting in pointing that out to him.

He gave it another irritated glance. "Yes, strange, isn't it?" he said with a heavy layer of sarcasm, wishing it could drip into the picture and gag the occupant. "I only live here..."

The portrait-Draco smirked a bit. "You don't live anywhere," he pointed out reasonably. The voice had the same undercurrent of delight he remembered reserving for a Gryffindor's failure and throwing things through Moaning Myrtle.

But he had a point. "All right, I _reside_ here," he corrected dramatically. "I _exist_ here. And I have for a lot longer than you," he couldn't resist adding.

"There's always a rough draft before a work of art."

"But there's nothing like the original."

"Yes, if you want moping and boredom."

"I hardly think I'm boring." He turned and floated back down the hall again, away from the picture. "At least I'm ambulatory."

He was past the next portrait before he realized he was being followed this time. "Well look at that, it looks like I can move too," the painting said, ducking past an affronted great-great-aunt Theia and then into the next frame.

"So long as there's another painting to run into." He floated on at a sedate pace; his painted doppelganger had to hurry to keep up, being so much smaller. He looked so childish, running around like that, dodging behind painted chairs and people.

"The nice thing about that is that there's always another painting." He sidled past an old man with a greenish tinge to his skin.

"Have some dignity, boy!" The other portrait tried to cuff him, but he ducked out of the way, calling "Sorry, grandfather," as he slid into the next frame.

Draco turned as he reached the door again. The portrait version of him was crowding great-ancestor Selene out of her frame at the end nearest him so that he could continue to smirk at him. He raised his eyebrows. "Well look at this..." he said, and then went backward through the door. Bright sunlight reflected painfully off the white door before him and hurt his nonexistent eyes, and he went back inside quickly, but smirked, already seeing the ugly look on the portrait's face. "The gardens are nice this time of year..."

"So is touching things." Painted Draco spitefully sat down in the vacated chair and glared at him.

He narrowed his eyes and glared right back, surprised at the sting of the taunt. It should have been just petulant, weak, even... It shouldn't have hurt so. "You're a prick," he said flatly, crossing his arms defensively to ward off any more attacks (the broken one flopping obscenely in front of him).

A mean-spirited smirk slid onto the portrait's face. "At least I'm not mad."

A quick flare of temper rose up within him, taking even him by surprise; he tried without a lot of success to step on it and crush it back down. "I'm not insane," he said shortly, and turned his back on the taunting picture. Nerves, nerves... why did he have so many raw nerves to attack? And why would the bastard not leave them alone was he found them? Portraits passed quickly on both sides of him as he glided pointedly away.

"I don't think I'd say that." The little jerk was keeping pace, ignoring the protests of their other painted family members as he rushed through their frames again. "If not insanity, what do you call arguing with yourself? And losing?" he added with relish.

"I am not _losing_," he said hotly as he whirled around to face him. They were near the end of the line again, and painted Draco settled himself back in his own frame with an insufferably superior smirk. He felt himself seething, wanting so badly to just flip that canvas around and trap him there against the wall. He couldn't even touch the world enough to do that. "Something went wrong when you were made, because you are _definitely_ not me."

"We agree on that. I'd never be quite that pathetic." The portrait screwed up his face in a grotesquely pitiful and even more grotesquely accurate impersonation of him, then let out a thin wail. "No, please... Father... Mother, help...!"

They had the same face; it was absolutely disturbing, and set his teeth on edge, playing his raw nerves like a finely-tuned instrument. His hand plunged into his robes for his wand, which he had, of course, after a manner of speaking, and then a wispy grey incorporeal curse splattered against the canvas, but of course a ghostly spell could do nothing, absolutely nothing to anything or anyone who was alive, physical, real... The portrait laughed and he felt his cheeks give an echo of burning, like he was trying to be flushed. If he still had blood it would have all been in his face; if he still had real hands they would have been ripping down that frame.

And the picture just laughed, a cruel giggle of selfish amusement bubbling up and escaping him as he sat there, untouchable in his chair in his untouchable frame, eyes alight with dark mirth. That little painted joker was related to Bellatrix, he could see it in the vicious giggles and the hungry cruel way he _watched_ him, drinking up the pain like she did...

"Five years here and you haven't been able to do more than scream..." he drawled. His eyes tried to be lazy but he could see them glittering like a mad thing, saying that this suffering was delicious, and he could see Bellatrix right under the surface... whoever had made that portrait had done It wrong, they hadn't painted him at all, just his aunt in a teenaged Malfoy-boy body...

The sound of a door opening and a step close by it were like dual explosions, pulling him back close to his intangible body to see the hall that had been fading so quietly away under currents of emotion. He jerked his head toward the sound of another step, and saw his father down at the end of the hall, a dark look on his face.

"Draco, leave the portrait alone," he snapped irritably. His face was a little weary and very annoyed. "Your mother is trying to sleep."

A hot flush of something other than anger rose up: a little bit of regret for irritating him, a fair amount of awkward guilt – over possibly disturbing his mother and being the reason she had to sleep in naps during the day – a lot of self-preservation, and a mountain of righteous indignation. That was _not_ his fault and he shouldn't be blamed for it... "I'm not doing anything, it –"

"It's a fucking painting." His father cut him off shortly, but he pulled himself up short when he heard the flat tone of his voice anyway. "I don't care if it's calling you a Muggle, grow up. You can walk away."

A surge of bitterness rose over all the other emotions, hotly drowning them, and he almost yelled at his father that he would never grow up, that he would have killed someone for the chance (despite the fact that he had failed to do just that years ago), and he couldn't walk _anywhere_... Then the emotion crested and collapsed in on itself, leaving just a void where it had been. He had nothing to say.

Without another word his father turned away and closed the door between them again. For a long moment the only sound was the muted shifting of his painted ancestors, all of whom, he was sure, were staring at him.

He turned his eyes back to his own portrait. "This is your fault," he hissed at it, then plunged through it, and the wall behind, and disappeared.

---

The warmth could only mean one thing; his mother wanted him. Hers was the only touch he could feel even that much.

It was daylight; he noticed it immediately because she was standing at a window with her back to him, and he thought at first maybe she had only walked through him on accident. But she was adept at spotting whatever misty patches indicated his presence when he wasn't a fully realized ghost, when he floated, and he thought it was intentional.

"Mother?" He drifted toward her, looking first at her back and then past the window to the gardens outside. He noticed again, absently, that even if he floated on a level with the floor he was a little taller than she was.

She didn't look back at him. "Did you remember that it's your deathday?"

He hadn't. Something clenched uncomfortably in his nonexistent chest. That meant it had been his birthday last week, and he hadn't noticed that either... Neither of his parents had pointed it out. For the first time, it had passed silently, unnoticed...

How could five whole years have passed? Half a decade since he had died. Time just fell through his fingers like everything else he tried to hold...

"No." he finally answered and floated next to her without overlapping her, not wanting to see the flinch of surprise that always came when she wasn't expecting the touch. "I can't... It's hard to remember the date." Maybe if he paid more attention to time as it passed, it wouldn't slip away from him like this.

"I thought so." She looked pensive, like she wanted to sigh but didn't quite give in to it. Outside one of the peacocks flew into the bottommost branches of a young birch over a fountain. Its tail hung down and nearly touched the bubbling water; it was an idyllic scene, very peaceful, and he thought he might prefer to lose himself in it than listen to this conversation. There was something off about the conversation already, the way his mother was preoccupied...

"Lets go outside," she suggested, though the voice 'suggestion' brooked no argument. She turned away from the window, the other direction so that she wouldn't look at him, and he followed her without a word toward the door, wondering as he did why he didn't just go through the wall. To act like he was really with her, he supposed.

They were both silent as they stepped into the garden; he must nearly have disappeared in the gentle sunlight, but he was sure she would know where he was. They had a connection, after all.

In the dappled shadows of the trees, he glowed; he passed cyclically between visibility and invisibility as they wandered. She didn't seem to have a destination in mind, and he was only following. He didn't press her to speak whatever was weighing on her mind. He probably didn't want to know.

Flowers bobbed in a light breeze around the paths. It was the middle of June; it was probably very warm, and the breeze looked just enough to be refreshing, barely moving his mother's hair at all. For the last third of his life, he would have been anticipating the end of the school year, the trip home, the belated birthday celebration with his family, two months spent being lazy and enjoying himself until school started again... Another ache started in his chest, but he could identify this one as nostalgia. It hurt to think about his life...

One of his mother's pale hands reached out and touched the top of a cluster of white narcissus flowers. Draco vaguely recalled that his father had spent a lot of money having them planted throughout the gardens and made to bloom year round. Where had he heard that? Dobby, he thought...

"I don't know where your father is," she said, looking at the flowers.

He looked from the flowers to her, drifting into the shade so that he would be visible, but he was frowning a little bit, trying to decide what he was supposed to say. It wasn't as though he had any idea where his father was either. Was she feeling... neglected, or something? That was an uncomfortable idea. He was normally relatively attuned to people's emotions, even if he used the fact to torture them better... but he wasn't sure if she was sad, or worried, or annoyed.

He had to admit that beneath her cool exterior, she often seemed sad.

"You've noticed that he leaves," she said, looking up and making it a statement more than a question. He nodded, although a little guiltily, because he had only kind of vaguely noticed, for the most part. Sometimes he didn't pay much attention as the days passed...

"He won't tell me where he's going, but I think I know. Or at least why." And now she did sigh, and took her hand from the flowers and touched his cheek. He was the one who was surprised at the touch this time. "You know I love you."

"Yes, of course," he said immediately. Hurt and accusations of abandonment aside, he had never doubted it. She usually wasn't expressive, but he had never been worried that she felt anything less for him; what concerned him was why she felt she had to make sure he knew. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want you to think that I have ever stopped." She looked at him sincerely, with a sad intensity, and he felt the warmth of her hand still on his face. "Or that I ever will."

"I know," he assured her, drifting a little from the shadow and touching her arm, frowning in vague concern. "What's wrong, mother?" he asked again, realizing she hadn't answered. She wasn't worried or sad or annoyed, she was depressed... How long? Shouldn't he have noticed?

Though he was in the sunlight and couldn't have been more than a faint shimmer, she met his eyes. "I'd like you to consider finding somewhere else to haunt."

He drew away to the shadows again, feeling absurdly like he had been slapped. Why? He couldn't ask but the question burned. They didn't want him around anymore, just because he was dead. Sure, we love you, we just want to love you somewhere, anywhere, else, where we don't have to look at you, or hear you, or remember you...

Sure.

He turned and flew through the trees and back into the house, straight through the wall, leaving her behind without a word or a look. Volatile anger and hurt would have had him trying to destroy her, and he knew he could... Just a few words that bubbled right below the surface to escape and she would be crushed forever...

In the dimness of the house he let out a sudden glow of silver light and a scream, grabbing his hair. Wretched. It was a wretched sound, and that was what he was... From the hall, he heard his portrait let out a cruel scream to mock him. Without thinking about it he plunged through that wall, and there was a crash as the frame fell to the floor, but he didn't look. He was already passing through dark walls and then the ceiling, something guiding him unconsciously back to his own room.

A familiar silver Slytherin snake winked at him from the borders of the ceiling, reflecting his own light. Without pausing to more than get a general idea of the excruciatingly neat bookshelf and desk and dresser he flung himself onto the bed, sinking into it until he was halfway embedded in the dark covers.

How could they want him gone? He gave a wordless scream of frustration and hurt into the bed. First his father tortures him, and his aunt kills him, and now his mother was throwing him out...

He could stay to spite them. Haunt them until they got the Ministry involved, just like Moaning Myrtle. Then he'd get sent to haunt that stupid field where he died for eternity...

"Draco?" From the hallway his mother's voice found him. He jerked his head up, eyes narrowed spitefully, and then abandoned the bed and dove through the closet door to hide there amongst the clothes, like he always had as a small child when he was about to get in trouble, or when he had to do something he didn't agree with...

Maybe he should just hide and never come out. It wasn't like he had any reason to.

"Draco..." His mother's voice was in the room now, and he narrowed his eyes further and glared at the door, shrinking back among the clothes and willing her to go away. Instead, the door opened.

"Draco." She was there in the doorway, looking right at him. He glared and turned in his spot to go through the wall, but she caught his wrist before he was all of the way out. It shouldn't have stopped him, when he could just go through her, but he let it. Maybe that spoke to his dedication to leaving...

"Don't hide," she said. "We need to talk."

He turned, pulling his arm through hers, to glare. Her hand fell from where it had been in the air. "You already said what you needed to say... You want me gone."

"I do not want you gone. Come out here and stop acting like a six-year-old."

The firmness in her voice threatened to upset him, but instead he stopped himself from replying and obeyed, looking at her from a spot near the end of the bed.

Despite the parental tone of voice, he saw that she still had the depressed look about her, and couldn't help but feel a little less petulant. He had only to remind himself of what she had said, though, to keep it from disappearing entirely. She had _said_ that she wanted him gone, now she was taking it back?

"I don't want you to leave," she repeated, meeting his eyes. He looked defiantly back, determined not to believe. "But I think that you need to... for your father's sake."

Defiance turned into a confused frown. "For him? Why?" That was the last thing he would have expected. Even below "we all hate you".

"Can't you see how guilty he feels?" she asked quietly. The flat confusion and the answer 'no' he felt must have shown on his face, because she sighed a little and looked at him with an odd sadness. He was used to sadness by now, but this was different. It looked misplaced. "He does. I think that when he sees you, he sees only your death, and not being able to save you. He doesn't need to remember that every day."

"I don't make him," he said defensively, meeting her eyes still. "I don't run by and say 'hey, remember how you let me die'."

"I was hoping you would understand... you might as well do just that. When he sees you he hears something like that. Eventually it's going to drive him mad."

"There's nothing to understand, you're just wrong. Father is not that..."

"Human?" she supplied quietly. He had intended to say 'weak', but hers fit better, and he nodded shortly. "Yes, he is. He loves you, and you should realize how you're hurting him."

He almost said that he 'didn't want to' aloud, and brought himself up short, vaguely disturbed.

The look on her face said that he probably knew what he had been about to say. It was a look of understanding, and he hated it immediately. How could she think so little of him? Malfoys were not looked at with _understanding_ – that was too close to _sympathy_, and that was too close to _pity_, and that was _wrong_. She should have known that.

Briefly he considered hating her, but he couldn't.

"I'm not saying we never want to see you again." She reached out and touched his face again, and he grudgingly let her. "I'm only saying that your father needs some time so that it won't torture him. If you give him a year, or two, where he doesn't see you every day, it will be enough."

He frowned at her. She didn't turn away. Obviously she was serious about... this. Leaving. Where could he go? How could she even _ask_ this? Sending him away...

He turned and floated away from her hand, through his bed. Looking at the room was easier than looking at her. Everything in its place, just how it was supposed to be. Neat, and orderly, how he'd left it the last night before his sixth year of school, the last day he had been here alive. Books on their shelves by subject, robes folded in the dresser and hung in the closet, a few toys and games with sentimental value stored in a chest in the corner. Everything where if was supposed to be. And he was supposed to be here too. That was just how it was. How could she ask him to leave?

"If father wanted me gone, he'd tell me," he told her, floating a circuit of the room and turning to face her again. She was still watching him. "He's not shy... he wouldn't suffer for sentimentality."

"No," she agreed calmly. "He would suffer out of guilt. He doesn't ask you to leave because he thinks he deserves to suffer" There was something about her tone that said she thought he should already know this... like she was explaining to a child. It roused his temper again, and he turned away.

"That's not like him." He spoke to the wall, arms crossed defiantly.

"It is." Her voice said he didn't really know his father. Or was he reading too much into things she said and didn't say? Not likely. He just understood her.

This conversation needed to be over, now. Or to have never happened, but he couldn't make that so. "I'll think about it," he said, making it clear that was his final answer, and pushed through the wall before she could respond. With any luck she wouldn't try to follow.

He didn't think he would be able to think about anything else for a long time.

---

"Why are you here, Draco?"

A silver light drifted in the darkness, gliding slowly over the walls. The light was him; he was the brightest light in the room. The fire had burned itself down out some time ago, and had not been roused since.

Silver ghost light played over a thin face in a chair near the remains of the dead fire. The pale skin reflected the cool light more readily than the warmer tones of the coals, like he was halfway to being a ghost himself.

Behind the edge of a carved goblet, colorless eyes considered the suffocating embers. The light shone off them like they were made of glass. Every so often they would blink slowly, but save for the mechanical motions, they hardly seemed alive at all.

He didn't answer his father's question. It didn't really seem directed at him, despite his name at the end, any more than it was directed at the remains of the fire or the remains of the wine in the cup. It drifted away in the air, the calm voice dissipating back into silence.

Absent inattention had him drifting around the room in no real pattern, sliding through furniture and occasionally partially through the walls in a vague circle around his father, because there was nowhere else to go. Outside of this room was only silence and darkness and emptiness... aloneness...

Lucius's voice came again, steady and quiet, directed toward the inside of his cup. "Don't you have an answer?" he asked, without taking his eyes from the fireplace where they rested. Draco watched them watch nothing without trying to interrupt them.

Nothing happened, while he hovered there in the air, watching his father, letting the words fade away again. He considered them distantly, but there wasn't much to consider. It was a straightforward question... "I guess not," he finally admitted, following his father's gaze slowly toward the fire, then back. "Where else would I be?"

"Where indeed..." His father murmured into the cup, then seemed to come alive finally, and emptied it in a practiced motion. When he set it down on the glass table beside him, it was full again. It was emptied and filled too often.

Draco drifted almost in place, watching him, but though he had roused himself he didn't look toward him exactly. His eyes remained faraway, probably from drink, possibly from heavy thoughts, pondering something only he could see in the fireplace.

"Draco wouldn't be here."

Now he frowned, and drifted toward his line of sight, but didn't take it over. The words were intelligible, but together they didn't seem to make much sense. He was probably too drunk to notice.

"I am here." He floated across his father's line of sight, but his eyes didn't flicker or focus on him. It crossed his mind that he _wasn't_, in fact, here... that he was as invisible as he was intangible, and that he would not be heard if he tried. Despair clawed at the edges of the thought.

But then who was his father talking to, and where was the light coming from? His mind slowly settled.

His father shifted slowly. "Are you Draco?" His eyes rose to meet his face, but he seemed to be looking through him anyway; his question was perfectly reasonable and perfectly nonsensical.

"I am." He turned as he floated away from the distant eyes, seeing the red constellation glowing faintly on the wall. It was always there. "You know I am..."

"If you're really Draco, and not just a spirit of vengeance, why are you here?"

He turned and stared at his father's profile. He had no answer.

His voice giving only a hint of satisfaction that he had been heard, his father went on, yet still without looking at him. "Draco would have gone. He would have seen that his mother was dying, and he wouldn't have done that to her." There was a pause, and he lifted the cup to his lips again. It might have held something stronger than just wine. "She wakes every night to try to bring you back from a place you can't come back from, spends all of her energy on you as though you're still alive...

"You can't ask the living to live their lives for the dead."

Silence fell again. The pale ghost light was growing brighter and firmer as the living light of the coals went out. Sharp shadows were thrown over his father's face as he drifted closer, and for the first time he appreciated the fact that his father was almost fifty years old. His mother too. They just kept going on, changing... Unlike him, they weren't locked in time, to be the same age or even the same person forever... How could so much time have passed, and just left him behind?

"Draco would have seen that, eventually, and he would never have allowed himself to hurt his mother. He would have found somewhere else to go."

That was true. The part where he wouldn't allow anyone, even himself, to hurt his mother, anyway. But he couldn't have been...

Did his father have any idea she had asked him to leave not a month ago? Was that why he said this? He couldn't have known... So he meant it. They both thought that he was hurting the other and neither would ask him to leave for themselves. Or they were both using the other as an excuse to ask him to leave for themselves. Or neither thought that they would leave for them and both thought that he would for the other.

He was trapping them both. How long? How long had they hated him for doing this to them?

He drifted in front of his father again, and this time his father finally looked _at_ him instead of through, and he wished almost that he hadn't. He looked so cold and pained and distant and hurt all at once, as the drink tried to make him feel everything he tried to control. "My son was never kind, or selfless, and I wouldn't ask you to be..." he murmured. "I'm just asking that you not be cruel. Haunt me if you like, I won't stop you. If you are Draco, though, don't make her suffer a punishment she doesn't deserve."

It was unanimous. There was only one thing he could do.

He drifted behind him again, watching as his father's eyes returned to the dead fireplace.

"I never blamed you," he said, melting back through the wall, into the darkness outside.


	7. Full Circle

**Interlude**

"Madam Headmistress! Madam, I say, madam!"

A thin sigh forced its way through the woman's narrow nose, but she glanced toward the painting that was yelling at her in a small voice. A miniature knight was running past a bewildered troll, obviously clamoring for her attention. That was unusual enough for her to notice, if not particularly appreciate.

"What is it, Sir Cadogan?" she asked, finally coming to a stop and turning to face it. Were it anyone else, or any other painting, she would have immediately assumed it was a serious matter, but Cadogan's record being what it was she made sure her tone was sharp enough to hopefully forestall anything trivial. Then again, Cadogan's record being what it was, it wasn't likely to help any.

He panted as he squared himself in the frame, but straightened up and puffed out his armored chest. "An intruder, madam!"

"Was this intruder on his or her way to class?" she asked, perhaps a little archly. She really didn't exactly mean to doubt him, but experience spoke for itself.

"Nay!" Luckily, he didn't seem to be offended; his enthusiasm was as undimmed as ever. "I was in pursuit of my noble steed, a merry chase which led me down three floors and across many a foreign land, when I found myself across from none other but your very domain. It was there that I saw the terrible rogue passing into your office!"

That caught her full attention, and straightened whatever minute relaxation had crept into her spine. "Did you try to see who it was?"

It was at that that he chose to be affronted, straightening his own pose to near ridiculous levels. "Of course! What do you take me for, madam?"

The same panting that had once let an escaped murderer into a children's dormitory because he had a list of passwords, perhaps. However, she elected not to mention that incident. "Who was it?" she demanded impatiently instead.

"Some foreign knave. I knew him not, but if he would have stood and fought I should have taken him down for the honor of the school and the name of Sir Cadogan!" He began to brandish his long sword about, but unfortunately it got caught in the sheath and he nearly fell over in his attempts to free it.

"Very good," she said absently, already ignoring him again and rushing down the hall toward her office, her severe robe swishing behind her. An intruder who knew the password to get into her office? Cadogan would – well, should – have recognized another teacher, and no one else should have been allowed inside...

She stopped briefly in front of the gargoyle. "Did you let someone inside?" she demanded.

The stone barely stirred, its limited intelligence rising up to answer her question. "No."

With a frown, she waved it aside and ascended the moving staircase behind. It brought her to her office door – still closed, and behind which she could hear nothing moving. She was thinking that Sir Cadogan might have finally gone completely insane as she opened the door.

A silvery glow that she recognized instinctively as ghost light lit the room inside, and she understood even before she caught sight of the thin silver figure floating in front of her desk. The gargoyle wouldn't have had to let him through, and Cadogan... Well, one would think that Cadogan would have thought to mention at some point that the 'intruder' was a ghost.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her. The noise seemed to get the ghost's attention, and he finally looked her direction. It was only then that she recognized the pale, almost transparent pointed face. "Malfoy," she said in something like a greeting.

"Oh." He looked at her with an oddly blank expression, with just a hint of disdain. "It's you."

"It is." She sat behind the desk and looked at him, her brief alarm returning to normal. Now it was almost like any meeting with a student... except for the silver light, and the vague mix of pity and loathing she was keeping in check that she had never felt for any other student. "Can I help you?"

He floated in the space between the desk and the door, choosing not to sit, evidently. His eyes met hers unflinchingly, though he had to know that his presence was little more than tolerated. "I want to stay here."

She probably didn't effectively stifle the expression of distaste that tried to rise on her face, but she made sure it was gone in a second. It wasn't her job to let her personal feelings make the decisions, at least not impulsively. Instead of answering immediately, she studied him. He had always been an intelligent and charismatic student, if a little too Slytherin for her to actually like... and then he had become a Death Eater and tried to kill Albus Dumbledore, and she lost any respect she had ever had for him.

The distaste wasn't just an impulse; that really wasn't a spirit she would want here.

Her eyes glanced toward Albus's portrait behind her. He wasn't pretending to be asleep, as most of them were, but watching with a small smile and the twinkle in his eye. He looked knowingly at her when she caught his eye.

"You know what I would say, Minerva," he said mildly.

"I know," she answered shortly, turning back again. He had watched Malfoy's last year at school with pity and understanding, more than she felt he deserved. Add to that Albus' dedication to helping people and ideal that no student should be turned away from Hogwarts, and he would have already said yes.

She wasn't against helping people, but she wasn't sure that giving a home to a Death Eater's ghost was a rational extension of that.

"You died more than five years ago," she finally said to Malfoy, watching him coolly. "Where have you been?"

"At my manor." His answer and voice were distant and vaguely uninterested.

"Your parents' home," she corrected.

"Yes," he agreed, unperturbed.

"Why did you leave?"

Some dark change came over his gaunt face; it wasn't really anger, or sorrow, or bitterness, or anything she could identify, but it seemed to change the actual shape of his face into something a little less human, make his hair seem even more disheveled, and give his eyes a strange light, all without anything actually moving. For the first time she wondered how he had actually died.

Whatever the change seemed to fade a little, but not disappear completely, after a few seconds, and he turned around. "I couldn't stay," he said, floating away from her.

"I gathered as much." He floated back and she realized he was pacing. The subject was obviously touchy enough to agitate him; she decided to let it go. It wasn't that important. Not that he would have extended the same courtesy to anyone. "Why do you want to come here?"

"Where else am I going to go?" he said simply.

"The place where you died."

He scowled, and the odd distance in him faded abruptly; he even seemed to grow a little more opaque. It didn't have the uneasy tinge of inhumanity attached to it that the question about his parents had engendered, though – in fact, it was the most normal expression he had shown yet, and relaxed her a touch. "The shore across from Azkaban?" he said. "I don't think so. I'm not going to stare at the ocean forever, I'll go insane with boredom."

She doubted he had far to go. That look of inhumanity could be easily explained by subtle madness. For that matter, so could the distant affect. How _had_ he been killed?

"No killers or family or friends to haunt?"

"They're all dead," he said without inflection or expression of any kind. "Except for my mother's sister Andromeda, who was not excited about meeting me. Hard to be excited about meeting a ghost, though."

She doubted Andromeda Tonks would have had much use for Narcissa's family, dead or alive, honestly, just as much as the opposite was true. That must have been an awkward and short-lived haunting. "The only reason you wish to come here, then, Malfoy, is because you have nowhere else to go?"

"Yes." He floated away again, pacing.

"Will you sit down?" she said in irritation. He looked at her with a mild expression of surprise, then did a decent job of floating as though he were sitting in the chair in front of the desk, only overlapping with the wood a little. "I don't know that 'nowhere else to go' is the proper motivation."

"What else do you want?" he asked, crossing his arms like a sullen child. For the first time she saw that one bent at strange angles, broken.

"Loyalty, Mister Malfoy," she said sternly, looking at him over the top of her spectacles. "Ghosts of Hogwarts must be loyal firstly to the school, and 'having nowhere else to go' is only a good motivation until you find a better offer. And frankly, your record speaks against you."

His cheeks flushed opaque, and his eyes dropped resolutely to the desk. Away, she noted, from the gaze of Albus over her shoulder. At least he could still feel guilt. Assuming Malfoys could feel guilt in life, she supposed; the evidence suggested otherwise.

"So what do you want?" he asked, still toward the desk.

"Does Hogwarts mean anything to you besides a place to stay? I need to know that you would be loyal to the school and the people in it."

"Of course it does," he muttered with all seeming of reluctance.

"Really?" She raised her eyebrows slightly, prying for the truth. He was difficult to believe, and she didn't doubt he knew that.

He was still as flushed as a ghost could get, but he looked up defiantly. "I spent more time here than home for the last third of my life... of course it means something to me."

The same old story. It had been repeated constantly for a thousand years: students came to see Hogwarts as a home and became attached... Some, like the teachers who were there, for better, and some, like Voldemort, for worse. Malfoy didn't seem to be the type to grow so attached to the school, when he had a home he adored and where he was wanted, but that didn't make the time he had spent there any less.

She regarded him evenly, and he looked back, defensive. "If the school were under assault again, could I trust you to work on our side?"

"Yes." He glared at her like he didn't like being forced to admit it.

"Even if it were Voldemort again?" she pressed.

There was a wavering pulse of the ghostly lightly from him again. "Yes," he repeated firmly. "There isn't anything else he can do to me..."

And that, she supposed, was basically the truth of it. He would probably be loyal enough to the school, since he no longer had anything to lose... Such a Slytherin. Such a _Malfoy_. A solid enough guarantee even so, though, at least coming from him.

"Very well," she said finally, and nodded. "The ghost council will have to formally accept you, but I doubt it will be a problem."

He blinked, looking suddenly startled. "You're going to let me stay?" His eyes darted up toward Albus' portrait, which she was sure was probably smiling, then back to her face.

"Yes. Welcome back to Hogwarts, Draco."


	8. Ghosts

"Harry! You'll never guess who just came to Hogwarts!"

With a jerk, Harry looked down at the fireplace. His heart skipped a beat at the unexpected voice, and his hand twitched toward his wand. Of course, it was only Neville, whose head sat in the flames with a strange mix of eagerness and apprehension on his round face; he'd recognized the voice at once, but it was generally never a good idea to startle an Auror. He was really beginning to understand old Moody...

"What? Oh, er..." He set his quill lightly on the desk beside his wand and considered the question, simultaneously wondering why it was so important Neville forgot to even greet him. He strained his mind for a moment, looking for anyone they knew who would have a child old enough for school yet, or anyone aside from Neville he could see coming back to teach. He came up blank on both counts. "No, I don't have a clue," he finally admitted. "Who?"

Neville looked up at him intently. "Draco Malfoy's ghost."

"Malfoy?" He couldn't think for a second; his hand froze above his desk and he could only stare at Neville's head in the flickering flames.

His former classmate looked like he felt the same way. "I knew he'd been killed, but I just found this out today... McGonagall just told us he was here."

So Draco Malfoy was a ghost. "It's not natural to have this kind of delay..." Rather than accept it as face value, his mind turned immediately suspicious and questioned the fact, looking for a more plausible, or more sinister, explanation. Auror habits... Eternal vigilance. "Have you seen him?"

Neville nodded in the fireplace, in the odd way that people did when they didn't have a body. "Yes, for a moment. It was definitely him. I gathered from the headmistress that he's been haunting his parents for the last five years."

Harry picked up his quill again and looked at it, thinking. That made sense; Draco had a home and family he was attached to a lot more than Hogwarts, so he wouldn't have come back there immediately. The real question was why he came back there at all. And not just to Hogwarts – why was he a ghost? It was strange to try to comprehend. He'd known ghosts, and known people – too many people – who had died, but to actually know someone who came back...

And honestly, of all the people around him who had died, the only one who left enough of himself behind to talk to was _Malfoy_? If it were any less tragic, it would have seemed like the universe had a warped sense of humor.

"You said you've seen him?" He tried to picture Malfoy as a ghost; what came to mind was the exact Malfoy he had known, but pearly and translucent, and a lot harder to escape. Sneering, drawling, and strutting, eternally reliving his glory days as he biggest bully and teacher's pet of their year. He could picture him tormenting the new Gryffindors and reminding everyone just how important his family was... It could have been worse. It was suddenly a bad time to be a Gryffindor at Hogwarts, of course, but there were worse fates than being a teenager forever, he supposed, for Malfoy. "Is he back to his old ways?"

"No, not that I've seen... I just saw him in passing, of course, like I said, but it didn't look like it..." His voice trailed off, leaving him looking thoughtful.

"What?" he prodded after a minute, frowning a little himself now.

"Oh. Well, from what I saw..." Neville groped for words for a moment. "He reminds me of the Baron more than, say, the Friar or Nick, if you know what I mean."

Slytherin? He supposed that was too obvious. "I don't," he admitted.

"It's like he's more concerned with his death than his life. It was just the feeling I got from him, the same kind of haunted feeling he Baron has."

He nodded thoughtfully; it was hard to explain, but he understood. "He must have had a hard death," he mused. Not that he didn't know exactly what kind of death it had been.

"Everyone who was killed by Voldemort did," Neville agreed quietly.

They fell into silence for a few minutes. Whatever Neville was thinking about, his own mind was dwelling on the past. He hadn't thought of any of the Malfoys often since they had released Lucius, four years ago. They'd kept their heads down and their name hadn't come across his desk in that time; if they were smart they'd given up the dark arts entirely, and he'd never have to think about them again. It had been an even longer time since he'd thought about Draco himself, alive or dead...

He supposed he could understand now why Lucius had gone a little crazy for revenge. If something had happened to little James, and he had to live with his ghost, he'd probably want to kill the one who did it too.

He opened his mouth to say something along those lines when Neville's head turned sharply in the fire. "I have to go," he said quickly. "There's something wrong." Then his head disappeared and the flames became nothing but flames.

His mouth closed in a frown. If Hogwarts needed help, they would ask him... The thought didn't keep him from itching to go and see what was going on, but it did keep him in his seat to finish the night's paperwork instead.

He was finally giving in to the restlessness and packing his things together to go home when a motion in the low fire caught his eye, and he turned to see Neville's head poking through the flames again.

"Hey, Harry."

At least he greeted him this time; he nodded a little. "Hi. I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back." He paused in shoving his paperwork into the appropriate bins. "Is everything all right there? You know I can come if there's a problem."

"Yes, I think we all know. If there's a problem, you'll be the first one we get a hold of." The disembodied head gave a sort of nod. "I just heard screaming."

He sat down again, looking at the fireplace. "Screaming? That sounds like a problem," he pointed out.

"That's why I left. It turns out it was just him, though."

His mind came up blank; he frowned a little. "'Him'?"

"Malfoy. His ghost was floating around in the dungeons, just screaming. It didn't look like he could see anyone who was actually there." A drawn look crossed his face. "It was disturbing. Especially when he yelled for his mother... He was acting like he was being tortured."

"He's reliving it," he realized, and at Neville's confused look, he explained. "His death. Something must have triggered the memory. What happened?"

"I have no idea." he shook his head. "When I got there he was already in the middle of it. By the time he disappeared he must have had every ghost but Moaning Myrtle trying to get him to calm down, and most of the teachers and half of Slytherin house watching."

"So no one did anything to calm him down?"

"No, he just suddenly disappeared, in the middle of screaming."

If he was reliving his death, Harry realized, that would be the moment when he actually died. He couldn't imagine having to live with _that_ for five years...

"What did McGonagall say?"

"That it was outrageous. She's going to have a meeting with the teachers and ghosts tomorrow to decide what to do about him. I don't see her letting him stay – it was really unsettling. I thought someone was actually hurt. We haven't heard something like that since the Carrows were teaching..." He trailed off toward silence. It couldn't have brought up good memories.

"Dumbledore would have let him stay," he said, leaning back in his chair. "He would have worked that into the start of term speech or something. 'If you hear anguished screaming in the middle of the night, don't be alarmed, it's only one of our resident ghosts...'"

"Yeah, that sounds like him..." Neville trailed off again, then looked up at him. "You're saying that he actually was tortured, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said unapologetically. "By Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange."

Neville looked at him silently, his face a little pale in the ruddy light of the low flames. He knew why; the same pair had mercilessly tortured Neville's parents until they lost their minds completely. He didn't mention it, though, keeping the thought private. "How do you know?" he asked.

Harry shook his head and didn't answer. "Ginny's going to get worried if I'm gone much longer. You probably need to get some sleep before class tomorrow, too."

"Yeah," Neville agreed, letting him gracefully escape the question, and the conversation. "I do. I'll see you, Harry."

"Yeah, see you." The head in the fire disappeared, and he leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling.

---

"So are you going to go see him?"

Harry glanced back and reached out to touch the baby's tiny hand as his wife settled on the other side of the bed with James in her arms, getting him settled back down for his next attempt at a solid nap. This sleeping in three hour chunks thing was not going over so well.

Seamlessly he picked up the thread of conversation from before they had gone to bed the first time. "I don't know." James batted his hand away, letting out another cry; she stood up to walk with him, and he followed to keep her company. "I wasn't planning on."

"I think you should. Shusssshhhhh...." Humming at the baby, she paced around the room.

Stifling a yawn, he walked beside her. "Why?" It was too late, or early, to be surprised, but he made a halfhearted attempt. "I haven't really thought about him in years."

"I know. I remember how much it affected you at the time, too, though."

"Mm," he agreed, trying to remember. Draco Malfoy had been dead even before Dumbledore's funeral, and word of his betrayal and then murder had swept through the students remaining at the school almost on top of one another. It had driven the reality of the situation home for a lot of people, coupled with Dumbledore's death...

But only those closest to him had known how much more he knew that what was in the paper. Ginny, Ron, and Hermione were the only ones who knew how he'd woken with Draco's screams in his own ears and Voldemort's cold satisfaction in his own mind.

"You said yourself he didn't deserve to die like he did," his wife reminded him.

"Well, it's not like I'm going to be starting a Draco Malfoy Appreciation League or anything."

"No, I know." She hefted the baby to a more comfortable position and looked at him. "He was a git and he deserved something. But he was a victim, too, and I know how you can't stand to see a victim. You would have saved him if you could."

"Yeah," he admitted, and took their son from her. James didn't appreciate that much. "Maybe I'll go see... At least try to get McGonagall to let him stay on at Hogwarts. He can't help the screaming." He looked at their son. "Probably any more than James can. Which is something he needs to learn..."

"Let's try my great-aunt's way," Ginny said, suddenly brandishing her wand. He turned away from her to hide their bawling child.

"I am not hexing my son to sleep."

"It's not a hex, it's a charm," she said reasonably. "And a child rearing technique."

"No," he said firmly. "It's not natural."

"People have been doing it for hundreds of years. It's better than the parents who just use a silencing charm on their children, anyway."

"Parents do that?"

"Not good ones. Let me see him, it's for his good; you need sleep, he needs sleep, and he'll be in a better mood tomorrow if he gets it."

He reluctantly turned around again. She pointed her wand and said '_Somnabulus_', and in seconds James was sleeping peacefully in his arms.

"We're still not making a habit of this," he said as he set James back in his crib. The baby sighed peacefully, and he tucked him in.

"No," she agreed; with her masterful straight face, he had no idea if she was humoring him or not.

He put out the lights and slid back into the bed with his own sigh, and wrapped his arm around her waist (still pleasantly soft after the baby) as she joined him. He kissed the back of her neck and she snuggled back to him.

"I think I'll go see him after work tomorrow," he murmured, his eyes closing drowsily.


	9. Reality

When had Hogwarts students gotten so _small_?

The flow of students around him heading to dinner was like a tide of pygmies, and Harry looked at them in some amount of bemused nostalgia. Everyone from first through fourth years or so were indistinguishable to him. He could never have been such a tiny thing... And just five years ago he had been here? He could hardly believe it. The sixth and seventh years had actually been here when he was still a student...

It was only the older students who looked at him with any excitement. The younger kids were curious about the visitor, but they didn't really know who he was; the name 'Harry Potter' might not even have meant much to them, or anything to the Muggle-borns. The freedom of unwonted anonymity put a spring in his step.

The crowd of students petered and stopped almost at once as he approached the dungeons, like they were abruptly cut off. The faraway din of the Great Hall was all that he heard, and even that sign of life was muffled by the thick walls. A weird sense of temporal vertigo assaulted him as he wandered into the chilly passages; for a moment, he wasn't sure that he wasn't on his way to Potions class.

A silver reflection on the wall ahead of him put the present back in its place, and he quickened his step toward the corner, already trying to decide what he was going to say to Malfoy. He didn't even really have a clear idea of what he was here to say.

The face that turned the corner saved him from having to figure it out so soon; he knew even before he saw it that it wasn't Malfoy at all. The silvery sheet of blood spilled down the front of the translucent figure was a dead give-away.

The Bloody Baron barely gave him a glance, and made to float past him. Harry only realized he had stopped moving when he watched the ghost pass.

"Hey," he called, before the spirit could leave him behind completely. The ghost paused and looked at him, that haunted look that Neville had talked about in his deep-set grey eyes, written all over his haggard countenance. He didn't answer, but Harry wasn't insulted; he was fairly sure, given the blood, that the Baron's method of death had been to cut his own throat.

"Have you seen the new ghost? Malfoy?"

The Baron looked at him with his unnerving dead eyes a long moment more, before he deliberately lifted one arm and pointed back the way he'd come from, down toward the deeper dungeons.

"Thanks." He nodded and turned away, following the pointing finger in a hurry. He gave one glance back, but the ghost was already floating up the hall again.

Shaking his head, Harry berated himself silently. There never had been any reason to be alarmed by a ghost – the most unpleasant thing they could do was move through you and give you a feeling like a cold shower, honestly. He didn't even know if he really was 'alarmed'; actually, he was just unsettled. There was something in the auras of some ghosts that just put you on edge... A little taste of insanity that you eventually realized you couldn't see the bottom of.

The uneasy sensation eventually faded, replaced only by the ancient distaste for the dungeons, legacy of five years of dreading Snape's classes down here. It was colder here than the rest of the castle, enough that he wasn't sure he would have noticed if a ghost had walked through him right that minute, and the light seemed dimmer, though he knew it wasn't, really. He wondered what happened to the spacious, drafty corridors he remembered and when they had been replaced by these normal-sized halls. Memory, he reflected, was a weird thing.

There weren't many portraits or paintings on the dungeon walls, at least not over here toward the Slytherin section, and that made it all seem a little barren. He supposed that must be how they liked it, but he wouldn't have been able to live down here for six years, that was for sure. It also meant there weren't even painted people he could look to for direction, so he didn't have any choice but to wander around more or less aimlessly, hoping to stumble on the ghost he was looking for.

Eventually he realized that he couldn't hear the rumble from the Great Hall at all anymore; he must have wandered deep below the school, maybe even the lake by now. He hoped students weren't going to start walking up on him soon now; he wanted to talk to Malfoy while everyone was still at dinner, hopefully, when they wouldn't get interrupted.

There wasn't the warning of a silver glow when he stepped around the next corner, and he stopped in surprise when he saw the ghost floating with its back to him. He recognized him at once, even from the back, but what startled him into silence wasn't actually seeing the ghost for the first time; he was prepared for that. It was seeing Malfoy wearing the plain Death Eater robes instead of his expensive school ones that jarred him.

For a moment he was able to stand at the corner and get a good look at him without being noticed. Malfoy was heading the other direction, not very quickly, and wasn't giving off a very strong glow. The only thing he could make out from the angle aside from his clothes, though, was his disheveled hair. That seemed symbolic, somehow. He remembered seeing it that way a few times: when he was scared shitless in the Forbidden Forest in first year, after he got turned into a ferret by the Death Eater masquerading as an Auror and teacher, when he was crying in a bathroom with Moaning Myrtle... yes, whenever Malfoy managed to look unkempt, it was very symbolic.

He couldn't stand there looking for very long, though; even though he wasn't moving fast, he was moving away. For a moment he considered just turning around and heading home, maybe going to visit with Neville so the trip wasn't completely pointless. He had to grimace when he thought of Ginny's inevitable knowing look when he told her he hadn't bothered to actually talk to Malfoy, though; she would not be impressed. It would be a lot easier to just get this over with.

He stepped forward.

Malfoy heard him and looked around. In the space of a second that ancient sneer rose up on his face, but he wasn't really looking at that. The face itself surprised him. He remembered, now, that in his last year of school Malfoy had started looking sickly and thin... Somehow he'd forgotten that and replaced him in his memories, even the memory of the dream of his death, with the spoiled and collected Malfoy he'd always known but never liked. Seeing him now brought back the real memories of the grey-tinged pale and gaunt figure he'd become under stress and the pathetic boy he had died as. And he found he still didn't like him. Maybe that should have surprised him, that he could dislike a dead person, but it didn't.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" the half-transparent pointed face sneered. He was less opaque than most ghosts, Harry noted; maybe that was how paleness translated to the half-life he was living now. "Shouldn't you be finished with this place – or are you still in remedial _everything_?"

The jibe forcefully reminded Harry of just how intense his distaste for Malfoy had been, and why. Arrogance and death weren't very flattering separately, and together they were positively repellent. With five more years of maturity under his belt, though, he was grown up enough now to see Malfoy's bullying for what it was: the knee-jerk response of a spoiled, insulated child who was probably basically friendless and didn't know how else to act. More; in this case, it was a full blown defense mechanism. Unbecoming, yes, and grating, not likely to endear anyone to him, but also pitiful. In fact, Harry was surprised to realize that since seeing his old arch-enemy, the dominant emotion he'd felt had been a repulsed sort of pity.

"I just came for a visit," he said evenly. It was easier than it ever had been before to keep Malfoy from getting under his skin, even without someone to hold him back.

That called up a vision of the time he and George Weasely left him a bloody, whimpering mess on the Quidditch field for insulting their families. The fond memory was still touched by bitterness at the loss of George's twin, Fred who would have helped them beat him into a coma if the chasers had let him go... and now a little more pity for Malfoy. On thinking of it, it never had been very hard to make Malfoy pathetic. It was just that he was stuck in that state permanently now.

Something that showed in his face must have disagreed with the ghost of his enemy, because his sneer suddenly turned into a hateful look, and he glided forward in a way that might have been threatening if he had any substance, with his hands balling into fists. To be honest it screamed even more of a pathetic defense mechanism now, the way a little kid would get angry when they were being picked on.

"That loser Longbottom told you about the new ghost and you had to come gloat over the fact that I'm dead," he spat viciously, his glow pulsing brighter for a moment.

He was close – oddly close – but Harry was struck by only two things; how much Malfoy sounded like Moaning Myrtle (and Moaning Malfoy _did_ have a ring to it; maybe he could haunt the prefects bathroom where Harry had accidentally sliced him open), and the way one arm flopped as he moved, obviously broken somewhere up his sleeve, but still managed to make a fist. Maybe that tied up there with his disheveled hair for symbolism – wearing his death on his sleeve, as it were.

Malfoy obviously saw where his eyes were, but he must have misinterpreted the gaze through his film of persecution. "You like that?" he said harshly, then grabbed his hand and twisted it around in a full circle so that the hand was pointing outward again. The light he gave off sputtered and flared up to light the hall like a full silver moon. "I was thrashing around so bad with the curses that I broke my own arm before they killed me."

Harry eventually took his eyes away, because that was grotesque, and saw a weird expression on his face: the same sort of delight-anger-self pity Moaning Myrtle showed when she talked about herself being dead, which was basically constantly. Whatever happened to feeling only one emotion at a time?

"I didn't come here to mock you," he said, making a half-conscious decision to be the mature one and not actually say most of what he was thinking out loud; it was mostly the thought of Ginny that did it.

"Then you just _happened_ to be wandering around in the dungeons?" His pale ghostly face said exactly how likely he thought that was.

Despite the fact that there were legitimate things he could have been doing down here, like coming to see the Potions teacher (if he even knew who the Potions teacher now was), he didn't see any point in making up a lie or pointing that out. Or how much Malfoy briefly reminded him of Severus Snape, and not in a good way. _Sneering_ and _sarcastic_ must be Slytherin traits, like _self-serving_ and _secretive._

"No, I was looking for you," he admitted, "but I wasn't going to mock you. I know what you went through."

"You know?" Malfoy suddenly seized on that with a twisted expression on his face, a change coming over him like an angry Veela losing her humanity. "What could you possibly _know_? Do you know how they used the Cruciatus to torture me for more than an hour, and kept reviving me so I'd have to feel it?" Now he wasn't just glowing brighter, but absolutely blazing, throwing silver light everywhere with erratic flickers of almost complete darkness thrown in. "How it was my own aunt who had the _honour_ of killing me for her precious Dark Lord? How he _laughed–_"

"Yes." He spoke up and right over Malfoy, and the word brought him up short. Malfoy stared at him, opaque in the way that ghosts flushed, looking feverish, but only staring, allowing him to speak calmly. "Yes, I know. I know he laughed, like he always does. I know that Voldemort made your father torture you, too. "

Malfoy gave a skittish flinch, either at the name or the memory, and the glow he gave off sputtered, edging back toward normal. "How?" he demanded hoarsely. "How do you know that?"

"I saw it."

"You weren't there," Malfoy said immediately, face like a thundercloud. He looked confused, and scared, and like being confused and scared made him angry.

"No, I wasn't there," he agreed. "Back in those days, I had a direct connection to Voldemort's brain, because he'd made me into a Horcrux when he killed my parents. I saw or dreamt things through his eyes when he was feeling emotional... He was very pleased when he was teaching your father that lesson."

"My father..." That stormy look on his face didn't change, but the harsh light around him faded slowly.

"That's all he was interested in you for." He didn't know how he knew that was what was on Malfoy's mind, but he did, and then he couldn't stop himself from saying it. Malfoy winced again and his eyes narrowed. Then, without saying anything, he turned around and started floating away, his insubstantial arms crossing in front of him.

"Hey." He pushed himself forward, following the ghost. Malfoy was visibly trying to ignore him. "I said I'm not here to make fun of you." Prickish as his behaviour was...

"Then why are you here?" Malfoy suddenly spun around and yelled. His broken arm flapped comically in the air.

He paused, realizing he actually had to come up with an answer now. It came readily, probably quick enough to disguise the pause. "To give you some advice."

"Oh yes, that's _just_ what I've always wanted," he sneered, his normal personality sliding back over him like a cloud to hide that other darkness. For a brief moment Harry was made uneasy by the flick-of-a-switch mood swings he was demonstrating. "Some _friendly_ advice from Potter the Saviour, five years too late to do any good even if I would ever have taken it... Of course all I normally get from you is fists and curses, like this one where you tried to kill me–"

"Hey... Hey!" He had to almost yell over him to get him to stop talking. Merlin, how did he get swept away in such a first-class self pity trip so fast? Malfoy's broken arm was raised to his chest where Harry had admitted caused a gaping wound, but Malfoy seemed to have selectively forgotten that he had been about to use an Unforgivable curse on him himself. Not the time to argue, though; Malfoy was not about to listen, anyway. "I'm not here to bully you either, so just shut your mouth for a couple minutes, okay?"

Obviously very grudgingly, Malfoy obeyed.

"It's the screaming," he said. Malfoy started to say something angry, but he just kept talking and didn't let him get a word in. "Neville told me about you scaring the students and the teachers. McGonagall isn't going to be happy. If you want to stay here – which you obviously do, since this is where you came when your parents kicked you out–"

"They did not kick me out!"

That time he couldn't drown out Malfoy's affronted yell, but he resolutely went on. "If you don't want McGonagall to send you packing, you have to do something about it."

"I can't." Malfoy lifted his chin – even floating, the ghost was no longer as tall as he was, so he was already looking up at him – defiantly, daring him to have a problem with that. He didn't seem to mind admitting it, but there might have been something else there.

"I figured." He had said the same thing to Ginny last night, hadn't he? It was harder to be sympathetic with Malfoy right in front of him. "So go to the Shrieking Shack."

He went still. "What?"

"The Shrieking Shack, in Hogsmeade. Everyone already thinks it's haunted. Lupin used to use it when he had to transform... You wouldn't scare the students up there."

Malfoy stared at him for a long moment, and he looked silently back at him. Briefly, he felt like Malfoy was about to thank him for the advice. He must have forgotten who he was talking to, though, because in a second Malfoy sneered at him.

"Yeah, we can't have their innocent minds tainted with the fact that sometimes people die, and sometimes it's not pleasant, can we?"

Harry sighed. He had really had enough of this conversation...

"Do whatever you want," he said, and shook his head. "It's just an idea. If you want to get the ministry to kick you out of here," _like your parents kicked you out,_ he thought and almost added, "go for it."

Malfoy had that ugly look on his face again, but Harry was done with this. He turned around. Before he had taken more than a couple steps the vague silver light behind him disappeared, and looking over his shoulder, he saw no trace of Malfoy's ghost.

He was glad to get out of the dungeons. The rest of the castle seemed that much warmer and more inviting after having been down there, and he stretched his arms slightly. He should stop by and see Neville anyway, and talk to McGonagall, too, before he headed back...

He hadn't realized how far he had wandered away from he dungeons when he saw the silver light again. His feet had been taking him back toward Gryffindor tower without his express permission, and he was almost halfway there. The pearly figure he saw down the hall was Nearly Headless Nick. Today was just a day for ghosts, he supposed.

"Hey, Nick," he called down the hall. The ghost turned and smiled when he saw him, coming back to meet him.

"Harry, what a pleasure to see you. What brings you back here?"

"Just a visit," he answered vaguely. "Listen, I have a question. How many ghosts go insane?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Nick answered with polite evasiveness. "Of course I don't know all ghosts that there are... and of course it depends on your definition of 'insane'," he added delicately.

"You know what I mean." He studied the ghost with his wobbly head. "What you would have considered insane when you were alive."

"I'd have to say that a lot of ghosts qualify in some way or another," Nick admitted reluctantly. "It all just depends. When you die, what gets left behind can be almost normal – like myself, I'm pleased to say – but things can also be lost. I really couldn't say why. Maybe it just depends on a person's personality before they die, or the way they die, or why they choose to stay..."

Harry nodded silently, thinking. So random, really, he guessed. When you died, if you stayed as a ghost, you got a new personality and you couldn't help it.

"Is this about the Malfoy boy?" Nick asked knowingly.

He nodded, glancing at the ghost again. "Yeah, I'd say he qualifies."

"Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but I'd have to say I agree. I'm sure he's a nice enough fellow, though."

Harry laughed a little. "I don't think you remember Malfoy very well, then. I don't think being dead has improved his personality, either." He raised his hand in a sort of wave to forestall any further conversation. "I have to go see Neville then head off home. Good to see you again."

Nick let him go, and he headed toward Neville's office.

---

"How did it go?"

Harry closed the door behind him and leaned over to give his wife and son each a kiss. "It went fine," he told her, hand on James' head. "He's so pitiful I didn't even feel like hitting him once. I'll be fine if I never have to see him again, though."

She smiled and didn't bother saying anything, leading him toward dinner.


	10. See The Light

"Couldn't make it outside, huh?"

Neville glanced to his right with his eyebrows raised, more surprised at the sound of company than bothered by the words. "Hello Draco," he said, looking the ghost over once, taking his eyes up from the essays on Mandrakes from his second years he was reading. "You're having a good night tonight."

Malfoy gave his defensive sneer at once, crossing his arms as he hovered around the wall. It was featureless on that side, with neither door nor window, and Neville could only guess where he had been wandering before he decided to come inside with him. Through the window at the teacher's back came only starlight, dimmed by murky clouds, and the room was lit by the merry fire in the fireplace; it was long past when Draco should have started his nightly ritual of forlorn screaming if he was going to do so.

"You didn't answer," Draco said with his sneer, a feeling of superiority written all across his face. It was obvious that in his mind nothing much had changed in the last five years. It didn't matter or even occur to him that Neville was decidedly less pudgy and a great deal more confident than he had been the last time they saw each other in flesh and blood, or that while he was there frozen in time Neville had grown up and matured, as living people did. To him, Neville was still the nervous, forgetful, clumsy, slightly pathetic teenager he had been... An excellent mark for bullies like himself, but not on the surface much of a Gryffindor.

That wasn't a very good description of him any longer. If Draco had any idea about the last year of school and the last battle with Voldemort, he obviously didn't think it changed much. Death, it seemed, had a way of blinding people, though...

"It doesn't need much of one," he said, turning his eyes finally back down toward the essays. "Your question, I mean. When's the last time you heard of a teacher who was here just because they couldn't cut it out there?"

"That old bat Trelawney." He didn't even have to look at Draco to know he was sneering now. "And what about that great oaf of a gamekeeper? And all the Dark Arts teachers that passed through."

"_Defence_ against the dark arts," he corrected. "Hagrid deserves his job, even if you don't like him, and Trelawney is a special case. Also, Hestia Jones has been the Defence teacher for three years running now."

"That doesn't say much about you, still. You're just here because there's no use for a Longbottom anywhere else."

Neville finally decided to abandon the papers for the present and leaned back in his chair, looking at the combative ghost. "I'm where I want to be," he said. "What about you?"

Draco frowned now, working out what he meant by that. He probably wouldn't come to he right conclusion, since he was so used to seeing nothing kinder than stupidity in other people's meanings. "What about me?"

"I guess you're where you want to be too, right?" Neville watched him. "Since you came here and asked McGonagall, after all. But you're not really acting like it."

Draco drew himself up with a sneer, affronted or feigning it. "I'm not so pathetic that the place I most want to be is this school."

"You can't go home, though." he said it as matter-of-factly, even understandingly, as possible, but Draco still didn't like to hear it. He got that ugly hard-eyed, opaque-cheeked look on his face that Neville had come to recognized as someone having gotten the better of him. It wasn't flattering. "I'm sure you'd rather be there, but obviously you can't. If you don't make an effort, though, you won't be able to stay here either."

"What do you know?"

Neville shrugged. "Maybe not a whole lot. But I know Harry told you you should go to the Shrieking Shack, and I know you haven't done it because you don't want to do anything your old enemy said. I know McGonagall and some of the other ghosts are going to get fed up if you don't do something, though."

"You do know nothing, then," Draco said coolly. "I don't have to do anything."

"You do... You're not a Malfoy anymore."

Draco glared at him, his gaze suddenly hard and annoyed. "I'll always be a Malfoy." He didn't have to say aloud that that meant he would always be better than everyone else.

"Okay, you're a Malfoy," Neville admitted, leaning back in the chair, "but you're also a ghost. You're a guest here. They're not obligated to let you stay, and no one is going to change to accommodate you. If you're not going to accommodate the living, then you're either going to get banished by the ministry or you're going to find out you have nowhere to go that isn't empty and abandoned. Obviously you don't want that... you must have been either pretty lonely or pretty bored to come in here and talk to me."

Draco gave him a hateful look and turned in place to go back through the wall.

Neville sighed. "Wait!" he called before the ghost could go, and he paused, looking back over his pearly shoulder. "I'm not your enemy," he told him plainly.

Draco's pointed face was narrow and guarded. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not your enemy," he repeated with a shrug. "I mean, what good would it do, really? You really can't do anything to me, and I can't do much to you, so what's the point? Nobody's your enemy anymore, not even Harry. If you keep fighting everybody you're just going to make yourself miserable."

Draco stared at him with a frown, looking like he had said something profound. Neville didn't think he had, but Draco was obviously having problems changing to suit the new situation... a socially stunted ghost, as it were. He might never have made that realization himself, but even if he didn't want to hear it now, it might get through to him eventually.

When Draco still neither spoke nor left for a long moment, he turned his eyes back down to the papers on his desk and started checking them over again. Eventually he saw the silver light fade away in the corner of his eye.

A silver figure floated across the grass.

Neville watched it from his window. He was too far away to see who it was, but he didn't need to see to know. He hadn't heard screaming in the castle for nearly a week, or had another discussion with Draco, who seemed to be specifically avoiding him, and his curiosity had grown.

He watched the grounds toward the north from his office window, and when he saw the figure retreating toward Hogsmeade in the gloom, he felt gratified to know he was right. Draco had finally decided to do something good for himself and adapt to being a ghost.

Pleased, he drew the curtain closed and put out the light.


	11. Home

**Interlude**

"MALFOY, Aquila!"

A pale blond boy, a little tall for his age but not unduly so, strolled forward from the line of his peers and sat on the stool, dropping the Sorting Hat on his head with a lazy gesture. It tried to slide over his pointed face, but there wasn't time for it to settle before the tear on the brim opened wide and shouted:

"SLYTHERIN!"

All five tables of students and faculty applauded, the Slytherins most fiercely; so did many ghosts. The ghost of Slytherin was not among them, staring eerily down the room. Neither was the unofficial ghost of Slytherin, the gaunt teenager at the edge of the room who even in death bore a striking resemblance to the newly sorted child.

With pearly grey eyes that weren't appreciably different than they had been in life Draco watched the new Slytherin take his seat at the table. The boy didn't bother looking around, carrying his air of superiority as palpably as his robes. He had no idea how ludicrous it looked on an eleven-year-old.

Draco watched him in silence. How many years since he had seen his brother? Probably since the summer before last; his visits home were rare, and almost always during the schools breaks. The first time he had gone back since they had asked him to leave had been Easter break eleven years ago, when he had learned that his brother had been born and they wanted him to meet him. An heir, finally, again, so the Malfoy line would not end with his stupidity in failing the Dark Lord. He could have rested easier with that, if he were resting.

The sorting went on, and his eyes didn't waver.

Aquila. Aquila Malfoy. Aquila _Belanos_ Malfoy.

They had the same middle name. It was either a tribute to him, or not to waste a good name, and he had never asked which. It wasn't hard to guess what they would say if they were forced to answer, but that wasn't the sort of thing they should have to. You never acknowledge when a Malfoy does something nice, unless you want it to never happen again.

"POTTER, Lily!" became a Gryffindor.

At least the boy was a Slytherin, like he should be. He didn't know him well enough to guess before the Hat decided, although the Malfoy name was a good indicator. Apparently his – their – parents hadn't been so changed that they couldn't raise him right.

He wondered if he should have made an effort to know him before now. It didn't seem like a very important concern, and their parents had never pressed it. His memories of them were like photographs, now: isolated tiny loops in time that played out, never conscious of the observer – him. Snapshots occasionally played in his mind of his mother watching protectively while the little boy hovered around on a toddler's broom in the summer sunshine. Or of a lavishly decorated manor where the Christmas gifts this time said _Aquila_ instead of _Draco_, where his aging parents watched with the old indulgence. In every frame they were a little bit older, the boy a little bit bigger...

There had been precious few conversations that he was a part of. A stern talking-to when he had made three year old Aquila cry by telling him how he had been there first and a few basically shallow "how are you"s that all flowed together were the greater part of it. They could look at him without pain, now, but they found they had nothing to say.

"WEASELY, Hugo!" became another Gryffindor.

With that the Sorting ended. McGonagall's speech was as abrupt as always, and the food appeared as suddenly as always. He left the wall, watching his brother. If he wanted to get to know him, the next seven years would be enough time. If he didn't... he probably wouldn't be able to avoid it anyway. It was hard to watch students grow up and not learn anything about them...

He wondered if there was a choice to be made between his old home, and life, and the new.

He passed the Slytherin table, and said "Hello, Aquila," to bolster his position in the eyes of his fellow children. Without looking at him again he floated away to mingle with the other ghosts.


	12. Fate

**Excerpt from "An Interview With Death: The Complete Tales of Hogwarts Ghosts, circa 2100" by Odessa Lockhart**

Sponsored by Scribblo's Quik-Quotes Quills.

Chapter 12: The Screamer of Slytherin House

"I was killed one hundred and five years ago by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

_The ghost before me is the second 'youngest' of all of Hogwarts' apparitions, behind only Moaning Myrtle [see Chapter 10: The Girl in the Lavatory], and the most recent addition of all to the school's phantasmic complement. Interestingly, the two student ghosts owe their deaths to the same person._

"You are referring to one Tom Marvolo Riddle, self-styled 'Lord Voldemort', the most powerful dark wizard in recent history?"

"Yes."

_He seems unhappy to hear the name of his killer spoken so plainly,_ _as though the name itself brings to the fore terrible memories he has tried for a century to escape._

"I'm sorry for the interruption, go on."

_His name was once Draco Malfoy, heir to a family and fortune that is still influential today. He left that name behind a hundred years ago, however; the pale, gaunt ghost of a boy I speak with now is known commonly as the Slytherin Screamer. For almost exactly a century he has wandered the halls of the school's dungeons, by day only different from any other sixth year boy of that House in that he is translucent and is free from the obligation of classes; by night, his screams echo through the school, a lost and desolate cry for help that can never be answered._

"I was a Death Eater - one of the Dark Lord's circle of trusted servants."

_He says it without shame or any sign of remorse; perhaps he is daring me to hold the affiliation against him. Perhaps he wants me to think that he got what he deserved. Having heard his cries in the night while conducting research for this book, I do not have the heart._

"And yet, he killed you."

"I failed him. I was given the task of killing Dumbledore, and a year to do it in, and when it came down to it, I couldn't."

"So you were killed because you couldn't murder for him."

_He doesn't answer. There are dark emotions clouding his grey eyes, complex and unreadable even to an experienced jornalist. Perhaps the living can never truly understand the feelings of the dead, even when they are right before our very eyes._

"You were murdered with the Killing Curse, right?"

"I was... eventually."

"Eventually?"

"He made my father torture me first, to prove his loyalty. Then when he wouldn't anymore, he let my aunt and uncle have their turn at the fun; they were his experts at the Cruciatus, and they didn't want to miss out. They kept it up for an hour... they could have kept it going for days if he hadn't told them to finish it."

"So you weren't directly killed by Riddle at all, were you? You were killed by family."

_A change comes over his face: the humanity leeches out of it startlingly quickly, replaced by an echo of wild-eyed madness, an ugly, frightening expression, though we all know a ghost cannot truly harm you. It passes quickly as he pulls his emotions back under whatever thin control a teenaged murdered ghost may have, and it leaves me glad that he is not an angry spirit seeking revenge. _

_Sensitive to his unwillingness to pursue the conversation on those lines, I change the subject._

"Do you know what made you stay?"

_Again, he chooses not to answer immediately. This is the all-important question that many earthbound ghosts dwell on for their centuries of existence, and yet a touchy subject for so many of them. Is this poor child among them? Has he even discovered his own motivations yet?_

"Did you want revenge on your killers? Or was it guilt over being a Death Eater? ...Did you fear moving on?"

"My mother. I wanted my mother when I was being tortured. It was the only thought I had left besides the pain; I must have been so focused on her that I came to her when I died."

_A lost boy crying for his mother, so desperate for the safety of her arms that even in death he sought it. Yet, the tragedy does not end with his death, but with hers, for now, a century later on, when she has passed from this world, he still remains, left with nothing but the empty haunting of his old school, and the knowledge that he will never feel those arms again._

_He seems aware of that tragedy; a deep sorrow is etched into his thin face as he looks away, drifting with the aimless preoccupation of a restless spirit who can never have what it needs for peace._

"So you haunted your old home..."

"Yes, for five years."

"And when you couldn't haunt her anymore you came here, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Do you like being a ghost of the school, with so many living people and other ghosts around you?"

"Yes, I like the company."

"Do you think you'll stay at Hogwarts forever, then?'

"...Yes... I suppose I will."

_

* * *

~The End~_


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